Ratchademic classrooms: Purpose, Props, Possibilities
I came to my first understandings of race, class and education in New York City during the late 1980’s and 1990s. It was “the golden age of hip-hop” and I was coming of age right in the midst of it. I would listen to MC’s recite poetry over rhythms and the music they created served as a portal to their neighborhoods and their lives. In some magical moments, the narratives in the songs I listened to overlapped perfectly with my own experiences. These moments made me idolize these rappers. I wanted to be them, or at least who I thought they were. Aggressive, Anti-establishment. Anti-school. Anti-academic. That was who they were to me, and who I wanted to be. I later came to discover that while the narratives rappers shared in their music came from an authentic place, the personas they shared with the public were too often constructed by the music industry and corporations with vested interests in selling caricatures of Blackness to the world. For Black youth, who were still figuring out who they were, the caricatures became real. They were the only versions of themselves that they saw being celebrated. I was a 6 foot plus Black boy being sold societies perverse notion of a Black man and I bought in. There’s a certain way that height and melanin equates to manhood for boys still trying to figure out who they are, and who they want to be. It’s the same way that, As Monique Morris describes in her book Pushout, that Black girls get catapulted to womanhood, and are forced to bear the weight of being both powerhouse and punching bag for Black families and society.
Unfortunately, My experiences in the 1990’s are no different from the realities of millions of young people in schools today. They are experiencing the tension of trying to figure out who they are while the world is telling them who they should be. When the boundaries of who you can be are marked out for you, you start believing that becoming the best version of who they say you are is all you can be. For me, this meant being a hyper aggressive teenager who held on to imagery about being Black and male that damaged my academic confidence and led me to make some very poor decisions. In school, when the comfort of my teachers began to grate against my confidence, I responded by giving them what they feared and secretly desired me to be. I performed a hip-hop superthug trope that I had seen dangled before me too many times not to know how to play the role perfectly.
Decades later, as an urban educator, I walk into urban classrooms very similar to the ones I once walked through as a young man. As a researcher, I am always struck by how the role I once played in school is being taken on by new actors. A few years ago, during a visit to a high school in the Bronx, I began speaking to a group of students who had been kicked out of, or cut class, and who were being rounded up by school safety officers. I asked one of them why they had been kicked out, and one young man with a freshly inked tattoo glistening under the dim hallway light and gold fronts in his teeth said, “the teachers don’t like us cuz we ratchet.” Laughter that signaled approval came from his peers. It was a moment that struck me deeply. That is the purpose of my exploration of ratchademic identities.
Ratchet is a word from my youth. Yes, from the 1990’s. I remember how the police; who were facing increasing pressure to address the high crime rates in New York City, turned their frustration into increased aggression in their interactions with youth of color. The sharp increase in violent crime made people feel the need to protect themselves with guns. In response, and with the presence of a burgeoning underground economy that made them readily available, young people started buying guns. Having a gun had become an essential prop in the role that schools and society had created for us. Thinker or scholar didn’t fit as well as gangster and shooter. In fact, being in certain neighborhoods in New York City and having a gun in the 1990’s was like being a mechanic and having a ratcheting socket wrench (also known to mechanics as a ratchet). That connection stuck. The slang word for gun in New York became ratchet. “Ya’ll better stop trippin’ cuz I got the ratchet on me” was, and still is, a powerful threat that when used at the right time, can blanket the person with the gun in a false sense of safety and instill fear in the person that provoked the need to wield or use the ratchet. The fear of revealing or releasing the ratchet kept folks respectful. It may have meant you didn’t get invited to certain places, but at the very least you were respected. It seems that in some way, the youth in the high school in the Bronx held on to a ratchet identity that served as a ratchet. In each case, youth held secret weapons that are dangerous when misunderstood and misused in an effort to mask feeling vulnerable and less than.
In 2007, Rapper Lil Boosie, announced that we “… all got some ratchet in us.” Boosie, in his interpretation of a song first recorded in the late 1990’s by fellow Shreveport rapper and self-proclaimed Ratchet King Anthony Mandigo, was making a declaration that the ratchet did not have to be a gun. While the east coast cats were talking about guns, the real weapon for Black folks in the south was within them. This reimagination of what I knew as ratchet, has infiltrated hip-hop and has been explored beautifully by a number of Black female scholars who see being ratchet as a deliberate pushback against respectability. Brittney Cooper’s description of ratchetness as a mechanism for Black women to reclaim space they have been robbed of, and Therri Pickens’ framing of it as a performative strategy in tenuous situations are insightful and helpful for making sense of both the concept of ratchetness and the experiences of Black women and queer folks who identify as, or have been described as ratchet. Furthermore, both Treva Lindsay and Bettina Love have described the ways that being ratchet has allowed Black and Brown girls and queer folks to create space and claim agency in a society where they are consistently placed under threat. For the most marginalized, the taking up of a ratchet identity is more visible and visceral than it is for others. The insidious nature of the oppression that is imposed on Black women and queer folks gives their expression of ratchetness a particularly visceral and visible form. I give props to these brilliant scholars for taking up and articulating what this phenomenon is, and means.
In my work with young folks, I am looking specifically at the ways that all students (particularly hip-hop identifying youth) take up ratchet identities that they use as weaponry against educators and schools. I suggest that across age, region, sexuality, socioeconomic status and gender, everybody, as Boosie declared, got a little ratchet in em (albeit in different forms). While the creation of ratchet as an identity is distinctly New Orleanian and southern, my engagements with young folks across the country and particularly on the east coast, uncovers that ratchetness is as solely southern as Hip-hop is East coast. Old Dirty Bastard was ratchet on the East coast in an era Jay-Z describes as “back when ratchet was a ratchet.” Big Freedia been the queen of ratchet from the birthplace of ratchet, and as Regina Bradley brilliantly showcases, Beyonce (with wealth, popularity and all the privilege that comes with it) performs and owns a Houstonian ratchet identity. Once we acknowledge how this construct is, and has been transplanted across hip-hop, we can focus specifically on uncovering the ways that young folks in classrooms perform a particular form of ratchetness that they, and schools, falsely believe to be anti-intellectual or anti-academic.
I make no claim to invent the notion of merging or interrogating ratchet and academic identities. Academic deconstructions of ratchetness and even the holding of a ratchet and academic identity exists everywhere among adults who have come to a place in life where they have reconciled their multiple identities, often after much struggle. Most grown folks who have been through some things eventually discover they can be their full selves. I am mostly reminded of the magic in Regina Bradley’s ever present Southern, academic, hip-hopness and the way it has always been on display in my interactions with her. My chief interest related to this area of study, and the work I was describing in my recent TEDx talk is in what happens when youth perform a ratchet identity within K-12 classrooms that has become synonymous with both a societally imposed and self-constructed anti-academic identity. I am working with youth to push back against an anti-academic ratchet caricature fed to them by media. I imagine, with them, a ratchademic (equally as ratchet as academic) identity and sensibility that celebrates a showcasing of their academic prowess as a part of their authentic selves. I am working with youth to not shrink their academic selves just because they are taking on a ratchet identity – while recognizing that this identity has utility and value for navigating the world. I work with institutions to help them identify the ways that youth who perform a ratchet identity are neither given nor made to be comfortable taking opportunities to showcase their academic brilliance. The intent is not to erase what has been done thus far. It is to illuminate a necessary and emerging frontier for research and practice in education. I’ve been at it for a bit now. I think it has powerful possibilities.
I came to my first understandings of race, class and education in New York City during the late 1980’s and 1990s. It was “the golden age of hip-hop” and I was coming of age right in the midst of it. I would listen to MC’s recite poetry over rhythms and the music they created served as a portal to their neighborhoods and their lives. In some magical moments, the narratives in the songs I listened to overlapped perfectly with my own experiences. These moments made me idolize these rappers. I wanted to be them, or at least who I thought they were. Aggressive, Anti-establishment. Anti-school. Anti-academic. That was who they were to me, and who I wanted to be. I later came to discover that while the narratives rappers shared in their music came from an authentic place, the personas they shared with the public were too often constructed by the music industry and corporations with vested interests in selling caricatures of Blackness to the world. For Black youth, who were still figuring out who they were, the caricatures became real. They were the only versions of themselves that they saw being celebrated. I was a 6 foot plus Black boy being sold societies perverse notion of a Black man and I bought in. There’s a certain way that height and melanin equates to manhood for boys still trying to figure out who they are, and who they want to be. It’s the same way that, As Monique Morris describes in her book Pushout, that Black girls get catapulted to womanhood, and are forced to bear the weight of being both powerhouse and punching bag for Black families and society.
Unfortunately, My experiences in the 1990’s are no different from the realities of millions of young people in schools today. They are experiencing the tension of trying to figure out who they are while the world is telling them who they should be. When the boundaries of who you can be are marked out for you, you start believing that becoming the best version of who they say you are is all you can be. For me, this meant being a hyper aggressive teenager who held on to imagery about being Black and male that damaged my academic confidence and led me to make some very poor decisions. In school, when the comfort of my teachers began to grate against my confidence, I responded by giving them what they feared and secretly desired me to be. I performed a hip-hop superthug trope that I had seen dangled before me too many times not to know how to play the role perfectly.
Decades later, as an urban educator, I walk into urban classrooms very similar to the ones I once walked through as a young man. As a researcher, I am always struck by how the role I once played in school is being taken on by new actors. A few years ago, during a visit to a high school in the Bronx, I began speaking to a group of students who had been kicked out of, or cut class, and who were being rounded up by school safety officers. I asked one of them why they had been kicked out, and one young man with a freshly inked tattoo glistening under the dim hallway light and gold fronts in his teeth said, “the teachers don’t like us cuz we ratchet.” Laughter that signaled approval came from his peers. It was a moment that struck me deeply. That is the purpose of my exploration of ratchademic identities.
Ratchet is a word from my youth. Yes, from the 1990’s. I remember how the police; who were facing increasing pressure to address the high crime rates in New York City, turned their frustration into increased aggression in their interactions with youth of color. The sharp increase in violent crime made people feel the need to protect themselves with guns. In response, and with the presence of a burgeoning underground economy that made them readily available, young people started buying guns. Having a gun had become an essential prop in the role that schools and society had created for us. Thinker or scholar didn’t fit as well as gangster and shooter. In fact, being in certain neighborhoods in New York City and having a gun in the 1990’s was like being a mechanic and having a ratcheting socket wrench (also known to mechanics as a ratchet). That connection stuck. The slang word for gun in New York became ratchet. “Ya’ll better stop trippin’ cuz I got the ratchet on me” was, and still is, a powerful threat that when used at the right time, can blanket the person with the gun in a false sense of safety and instill fear in the person that provoked the need to wield or use the ratchet. The fear of revealing or releasing the ratchet kept folks respectful. It may have meant you didn’t get invited to certain places, but at the very least you were respected. It seems that in some way, the youth in the high school in the Bronx held on to a ratchet identity that served as a ratchet. In each case, youth held secret weapons that are dangerous when misunderstood and misused in an effort to mask feeling vulnerable and less than.
In 2007, Rapper Lil Boosie, announced that we “… all got some ratchet in us.” Boosie, in his interpretation of a song first recorded in the late 1990’s by fellow Shreveport rapper and self-proclaimed Ratchet King Anthony Mandigo, was making a declaration that the ratchet did not have to be a gun. While the east coast cats were talking about guns, the real weapon for Black folks in the south was within them. This reimagination of what I knew as ratchet, has infiltrated hip-hop and has been explored beautifully by a number of Black female scholars who see being ratchet as a deliberate pushback against respectability. Brittney Cooper’s description of ratchetness as a mechanism for Black women to reclaim space they have been robbed of, and Therri Pickens’ framing of it as a performative strategy in tenuous situations are insightful and helpful for making sense of both the concept of ratchetness and the experiences of Black women and queer folks who identify as, or have been described as ratchet. Furthermore, both Treva Lindsay and Bettina Love have described the ways that being ratchet has allowed Black and Brown girls and queer folks to create space and claim agency in a society where they are consistently placed under threat. For the most marginalized, the taking up of a ratchet identity is more visible and visceral than it is for others. The insidious nature of the oppression that is imposed on Black women and queer folks gives their expression of ratchetness a particularly visceral and visible form. I give props to these brilliant scholars for taking up and articulating what this phenomenon is, and means.
In my work with young folks, I am looking specifically at the ways that all students (particularly hip-hop identifying youth) take up ratchet identities that they use as weaponry against educators and schools. I suggest that across age, region, sexuality, socioeconomic status and gender, everybody, as Boosie declared, got a little ratchet in em (albeit in different forms). While the creation of ratchet as an identity is distinctly New Orleanian and southern, my engagements with young folks across the country and particularly on the east coast, uncovers that ratchetness is as solely southern as Hip-hop is East coast. Old Dirty Bastard was ratchet on the East coast in an era Jay-Z describes as “back when ratchet was a ratchet.” Big Freedia been the queen of ratchet from the birthplace of ratchet, and as Regina Bradley brilliantly showcases, Beyonce (with wealth, popularity and all the privilege that comes with it) performs and owns a Houstonian ratchet identity. Once we acknowledge how this construct is, and has been transplanted across hip-hop, we can focus specifically on uncovering the ways that young folks in classrooms perform a particular form of ratchetness that they, and schools, falsely believe to be anti-intellectual or anti-academic.
I make no claim to invent the notion of merging or interrogating ratchet and academic identities. Academic deconstructions of ratchetness and even the holding of a ratchet and academic identity exists everywhere among adults who have come to a place in life where they have reconciled their multiple identities, often after much struggle. Most grown folks who have been through some things eventually discover they can be their full selves. I am mostly reminded of the magic in Regina Bradley’s ever present Southern, academic, hip-hopness and the way it has always been on display in my interactions with her. My chief interest related to this area of study, and the work I was describing in my recent TEDx talk is in what happens when youth perform a ratchet identity within K-12 classrooms that has become synonymous with both a societally imposed and self-constructed anti-academic identity. I am working with youth to push back against an anti-academic ratchet caricature fed to them by media. I imagine, with them, a ratchademic (equally as ratchet as academic) identity and sensibility that celebrates a showcasing of their academic prowess as a part of their authentic selves. I am working with youth to not shrink their academic selves just because they are taking on a ratchet identity – while recognizing that this identity has utility and value for navigating the world. I work with institutions to help them identify the ways that youth who perform a ratchet identity are neither given nor made to be comfortable taking opportunities to showcase their academic brilliance. The intent is not to erase what has been done thus far. It is to illuminate a necessary and emerging frontier for research and practice in education. I’ve been at it for a bit now. I think it has powerful possibilities.Video Player
Non-exhaustive suggested reading/watching
Bradley, R. N. (2013, March 19). I been on (ratchet): Conceptualizing a sonic ratchet aesthetic in Beyonce’s “bow down”.
Cohen, C. J. (1997). Punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens: The radical potential of queer politics? GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian & Gay Studies, 3, 437-465.
Cooper, B. (2012, December 31). (Un)Clutching my mother’s pearls, or ratchetness and the residue of respectability.
Lindsey, T. B. (2015). Let me blow your mind: Hip hop feminist futures in theory and praxis. Urban Education, 50(1), 52–77. doi:10.1177/0042085914563184
Love, B. L. (2017). A Ratchet Lens: Black Queer Youth, Agency, Hip Hop, and the Black Ratchet Imagination. Educational Researcher.
Stallings, L. H. (2013). Hip hop and the Black ratchet imagination. Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International, 2(2), 135-139.
Lil Boosie: Do the Ratchet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI1et8hBti8
Teaching and Being Ratchetdemic TEDX talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QmFREcXri0
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