Si Se Puede, But Who Gets the Gravy?

Abstract

Using the alternating voices of rap and standard academic discourse, this short piece is a plea for the civil rights community to "get real" and to put some of its efforts into reforming the actual conditions under which many of the less fortunate live. The rap passages are rude, direct, even raunchy, while the prose passages proceed in academic English. This dichotomy is intentional: Rap represents the voice of the people, the voice from below, the voice of those who live in neighborhoods filled with broken glass. It is an impatient, insurgent voice that bears little in common with the complex, jargon-filled sentences of most contemporary left discourse. The latter voice, in the author's view, has become too detached from that of the many constituents who worry about their children turning to gangs and drugs and dropping out of school, about police harassment, and where their next paycheck is coming from.

Keywords: civil rights, discrimination, critical race theory, disadvantaged, academic discourse, legal discourse, voice of the people, hip hop, rap, legal scholarship