“It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp... with... a Whole Lot of Bitches Jumpin' Ship”: Navigating Black Politics in the Wake of Katrina

Abstract

If not quite in these words, some scholars and activists who have promoted a social movement based on the civil rights movement have implied that their project is undermined by “a whole lot of bitches jumpin' ship,” while few bother to question whether and to what extent that movement provides the best strategy for liberation. Fewer still have solicited insight from populations that—instead of mere cowardice or sheer apathy—might possess a social critique that could provide the basis for a reinvigorated post–civil rights political project. In the spirit of developing the critical stance that might attend to this mission, this essay considers the relationship among oratory, textuality, and gendered authority by discussing how The Covenant with Black America is strategically deployed (though its contents are scarcely discussed) during the 2006 State of the Black Union political performance and exploring the spellbinding power of masculine leadership in Hustle and Flow, where the labor of an entire household is required to produce a male rapper as an icon of fame whose lyrical talent propels him into the spotlight. I consider these two episodes against the political backdrop of 2005–6, defined primarily by the tragic events of Hurricane Katrina, which intensified longing for a black leader who could quell the crisis. Revisiting this event helps me track efforts to recuperate a male leader that conform to popular ideas about how social movements proceed but which ignore the need for different perspectives in any political project that will succeed in undoing persistent inequalities—and that refuse to question whether and to what extent civil rights frontiership provides the default strategy for a political project designed to empower African Americans and other oppressed constituencies.

Pitch Black: How design entrepreneurs are rethinking race in post‐Katrina schools

“…Christien Tompkins https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7346-5675 ENDNOTES 1 Michael Ralph (2009) notes the ways various actors drew on the narrative of the biblical flood as a pretext for new political beginnings in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. 2 Adams (2013) probed the ways that faith-based initiatives and neoliberal privatization schemes were intertwined in the post-Katrina "recovery."…”

“…11Michael Ralph (2009) notes the ways various actors drew on the narrative of the biblical flood as a pretext for new political beginnings in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.…”

They Are NotRomeo Pimps, They Are Traffickers: Overcoming the Socially Dominant Discourse to Prevent the Sex Trafficking of Youth

“…It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp is a song that won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 2006, as the theme for the film Hustle & Flow , written and performed by the hip-hop group “Three 6 Mafia.” The film and the song narrate the life of a trafficker, glamorizing and normalizing sexual exploitation and violence toward women (Ralph, 2009). Famous hip-hop singers as Bishop Don “Magic” and Snoop Dogg have proudly defended being pimps in the past, getting the attention of the mass media that have published their feats.…”

Black Protest Events In The Us 1994-2010: Issues, Campaigns And Trends

“…There are also articles about protests relevant to post-Katrina development in New Orleans (Brand 2008), Black organizations engaged in defensive development in Chicago to avoid gentrification (Boyd 2008), and interactions between White environmentalists and Black civil rights leaders in a Southern county (Hines 2015). The search also turned up an analysis of the politics and rhetoric of the 2008 State of the Black Union conference (Ralph 2009). Even for recent publications, the keyword search turned up more studies of the Civil Rights and even pre-Civil Rights eras (e.g., Baxandall 2001, Bell 2004, Berg 2005, Berger 2009, Bergin 2016, Brame and Shriver 2013, Breitzer 2011, Brown 2015, Williams 2004 and studies of the post-2012 Black Lives Matter mobilizations (e.g., Asoka 2015, Bell et al 2013, Bonilla and Rosa 2015, Brooms and Perry 2016, De Choudhury et al 2016.…”