Becoming Black: Rap and Hip-Hop, Race, Gender, Identity, and the Politics of

ESL Learning
Abstract
This paper is about the impact of becoming Black on ESL learning, that is, the
interrelation between identity and learning. It contends that a group of French-
speaking immigrant and refugee continental African youths who are attending an
urban Franco-Ontarian high school in South Western Ontario, Canada, enters a
social imaginary a discursive space in which they are already imagined,
constructed, and thus treated as Blacks by hegemonic discourses and groups. This
imaginary is directly implicated in whom they identify with (Black America) which in
turn, influences what and how they linguistically and culturally learn. They learn
Black stylized English, which they access in hip hop culture and rap lyrical and
linguistic styles. This critical ethnography, conducted within an interdisciplinary
framework, shows that ESL is neither neutral nor without its politics and pedagogy
of desire and investment.
The Paper

[T]he problem of the twentieth century is the problem of color-line, asserted W. E.

Du Bois (1903, p. 13). If this be so, what are the implications of t/his prophetic
statement as far as second language learning/acquisition (SLA) is implicated? In this
fin de sicle, where identity formation is increasingly mediated by technological
mediums, who learns what and how? How do our differently raced, gendered,
sexualized, abled, and classed social identities enter the process of learning a
second language? In a postcolonial era when postcolonial subjects are constituting
part of the Metropolitan centers, what is the critical pedagogy required in order
not to repeat the colonial history embedded in the classroom relationship between
white teachers and students of color? Finally, at a time when the North American
blackness is governed by how it is negatively located in a race conscious society,
what does it mean for a Black ESL learner to take up and acquire Black English as
a Second Language (BESL)? In other words, what symbolic, cultural, pedagogical,
and identity investment would a learner have in locating oneself politically and
racially at the margin of representation?
This paper is an attempt, a will to an answer. Conceptually, it is located at the
borderline between two indistinguishable, and perhaps never separable, categories
of critical discourses: race and gender. The paper addresses the process of
becoming Black, where race is as vital as gender, and articulates a political and
pedagogical research framework which puts at its center the social being as
embodied subjectivities which are embedded in and performed through language,
culture, history, and memory (Dei, 1996; Essed, 1991; Gilroy, 1987; Ibrahim, 1998;
Rampton, 1995; Giroux and Simon, 1989). As an identity configuration, becoming
Black is deployed to talk about the subject formation project which is produced in,
and simultaneously is produced by the process of language learning, namely
learning Black English as a Second Language (BESL). Put more concretely,
becoming Black meant, as it will be seen, learning BESL, yet the very process of
BESL learning produced the epiphenomenon of becoming Black. To become, I have
argued elsewhere (Ibrahim, 1998), is historical. Indeed, it is history and how we
experience it that govern our identity, memory, ways of being, becoming, and
learning (see also Foucault, 1979, pp. 170-184). To address, therefore, questions of
pedagogy in this context, is necessarily to attend to and be concerned with the
linkages between the Self, identity, desire and the English(es) that our students
invest in.

This paper is part of a larger ethnographic study (Ibrahim, 1998). It made use of the
above critical frames and the newly developed methodological approach
ethnography of performance. The latter argues that social beings perform (Butler,
1990), at least in part, their subjectivities, identities, and desires in and through
complex semiological languages. These comprise anything that does not have
verbal utterance ability, mute, yet ready to speak: the body, modes of dress,
architecture, photography, etc. (see Halliday & Hasan, 1985; Barthes,
1967/1983).The research took place in an urban French-language high school in
South Western Ontario, Canada, which I will refer to as Marie-Victorin (M.V.), and it
looks at the lives of a group of continental francophone African youths and their
social identity formation. Besides their youth and refugee status, their gendered and
raced experience is vital in their moments of identification: i.e., where and how
they see themselves reflected in the mirror of their society (see also Bhabha, 1994).
Put otherwise, once in North America, I contend, these youths are faced with a
social imaginary (Anderson, 1983) where they are already Blacks. This social
imaginary is directly implicated in how and whom they identify with, which in turn
influences what they linguistically and culturally learn, as well as how. What they
learn, I demonstrate, is Black stylized English which they access in and through
Black popular culture. They learn by taking up and re-positing the rap linguistic and
musical genre and, in different ways, acquiring and re-articulating hip hop cultural
identity.

Black stylized English (BSE) is Black English (BE) with style; it is a subcategory. BE
is what Smitherman (1994) refers to as Black talk, which has its own grammar and
syntax (see Labov, 1972). BSE, on the other hand, refers to ways of speaking that
do not depend on a full mastery of the language. It banks more on ritual
expressions (see Rampton, 1995, for the idea of rituality) such as whassup,
whadap, whassup my Nigger, yo, yo homeboy, which are performed habitually
and recurrently in rap. The rituals are more an expression of politics, moments of
identification, and desire than they are of language or mastering the language per
se. It is a way of saying I too am Black or I too desire and identify with blackness.
By Black popular culture, on the other hand, I am referring to films, newspapers,
magazines, and more importantly music such as rap, reggae, pop, and rhythm and
blues (R&B). The term hip hop refers to the overall naming apparatus which
comprises everything from music (especially rap), to clothing choice, attitudes,
language, and an approach to culture and cultural artifacts, positing and collaging
them in an unsentimental fashion (Walcott, 1995, p. 5). More skeletally, I use hip
hop to describe a way of dress, walk, and talk. The dress refers to the myriad
shades and shapes of the latest fly gear: high-top sneakers, bicycle shorts, chunk
jewelry, baggy pants, and polka-dotted tops (Rose, 1991, p. 277). The hair styles are
as well part of this fashion. These include high fade designs, dread, corkscrews, and
braids (ibid.). The walk usually means moving the hands fingers simultaneously
with the head and the rest of the body as one is walking. The talk, however, is the
BSE that I refer to above. By patterning these behaviors, significantly, African
youths enter the realm of becoming Black. Hence, this paper is about this process of
becoming and how it is implicated in BSE learning.

In this process, the interlocking question of identification and desire is of particular

interest. It asks the following: Who do we as social subjects living within a social
space desire to be or to become? And who do we identify with and what
repercussions does our identification have on how and what we learn? This question
has already been dealt with in semiology (Gottdiener, 1995; Barthes, 1967/1983;
Eco, 1976), psychoanalysis (Lacan, 1988; Kristeva, 1974), and cultural studies
(Grossberg et al., 1992; Bhabha, 1994; Hall, 1990; Mercer, 1994). I am yet to see it
raised, let alone incorporated seriously, in ESL and applied linguistic research. For
instance, in her study, Lynn Goldstein (1987) focused on the linguistic features of
Black English as they were found in the speech of a group of Puerto Rican youths in
New York City. However, she did not address the issue of what it means for a Puerto
Rican youth to learn Black English? What investment does s/he have in doing so?
And what roles, if any, do race, desire and identification have in the process of
learning? Instead, Goldstein offers a very meticulous syntactico-morphological
analysis. It is not a question of either/or, but I strongly believe that it would be more
fruitful for ESL pedagogy, and the nature of SLA would be better understood if both
were located within a socio-cultural context. Language, Bourdieu (1991) argues, is
no longer and never was just an instrument of communication. It is also where
power is formed and performed based on race, gender, sexuality, and class social
identity. My work differs from Goldsteins study in that it moves toward a more
cultural, political, and stylistic analysis.
In what follows, I discuss the methodology, the site, and the subject of my research.
This will be intersected with a discussion of the researchs guiding propositions,
contentions, and questions, with a look at how the I, the researcher, is implicated
in the research and the questions he is asking. I then offer examples of African
youths speech where BSE can be detected, to demonstrate the interplay between
subject formation, identification, and BESL learning. I will also offer students
reflections and narratives on the impact of identification on becoming Black.
Centralizing their everyday experience of identity, I hereafter conclude with some
critical pedagogical (Pennycook, 1994; Peirce, 1989; Corson, 1997) and didactic
propositions on the connections between investment, subjectivity, and ESL learning.
Beginning with the premise that ESL learning is locality, I ask the following: if local
identity is the site where we as teachers and researchers should start our praxis and
research formulations (Rampton, 1995; Peirce 1997; Morgan, 1997), then I would
contend that any pedagogical input that does not link the political, the cultural, and
the social with identity and, in turn, with the process of ESL learning, is likely to fail.

RESEARCH(ER) SITE, SUBJECTS, METHODOLOGY, AND QUESTIONS

Between January and June 1996, I conducted a critical ethnographic research

project at Marie-Victorin (M. V.), a small Franco-Ontarian intermediate and high
school (grades 7-13). M.V. has a school population of approximately 389 students
from a different ethnic, racial, cultural, religious, and linguistic backgrounds.
Although it is a French-language school, the language spoken by students in the
school corridors and hallways is predominately English; Arabic, Somali, and Farsi are
also spoken at other times. The school has 27 teachers, all of whom are white. The
school archives show that up until the beginning of the 1990s, students were also
almost all white, except for a few students of African (read Blacks) and Middle
Eastern descent.

For a period of over six months, I attended classes at M.V., talked to students, and
observed curricular and extra-curricular activities two or three times per week.
Because of previous involvement in another project in the same school for almost
two years, at the time of this research I was well acquainted with M.V. and its
population, especially its African students, with whom I was able to develop a good
communicative relationship.

Being the only Black adult beside the Black counselor, and being a displaced
subject, a refugee, and an African myself had given me a certain familiarity with the
students experiences. I was able to connect with different age and gender groups
through a range of activities, initially hanging out with the students, and later
playing basketball, volleyball and soccer with various groups. I was also approached
by these students for both guidance and academic help. Because of my deep
involvement in the student culture, at times my status as researcher was forgotten,
and the line between the students and myself became blurred; clearly, there was a
space of comfort, a safe space which allowed us to open up, speak and engage
freely. This research was as much about the youths themselves and their narration
of their experiences as it was about my own; in most cases, the language itself was
unnecessary in order to understand the plight of the youths and their daily
encounters, both within M.V. and outside its walls.

Significantly, at the time of this research, the percentage of the students at M.V. (or
their parents) who were born outside Canada made up 70 percent of the entire
school population. Continental Africans constituted the majority within that figure,
and indeed within M.V.s population in general, although their numbers did fluctuate
slightly from year to year. However, with the exception of one temporary Black
counselor, there was not one teacher or administrator of color at the school.
Despite this, the school continues to emphasize the theme of unity within this
multicultural and multi-ethnoracial population. The slogan which the school
advertises, for instance, is "Unit dans la diversit" [Unity in diversity]. This
discourse of unity, however, remains at the level of abstraction and it has little
material bearing on the students lives; it is the Frenchness of the school that seems
to be the capital of its promotion. That is, the French language, especially in
Canada, represents an extremely important symbolic capital which, according to
Bourdieu (1991), can be the key for accessing material capitals -- jobs, business,
etc. Given their postcolonial educational history, African youths, in the majority, do
in fact come to Franco-Ontarian schools already possessing a highly valued
symbolic capital: le franais parisien.

My research subjects encompass these youths and part of a growing continental

francophone African population in Franco-Ontarian schools to which I refer as Black
Franco-Ontarians. Their number started to exponentially grow since the beginning of
the 1990s. Their histories vary, first, in their length of sojourn in Canada which
extends from one or two to 5 or 6 years; secondly, their legal status (some are
immigrants, but the majority are refugees) and, thirdly, their gender, class, age,
linguistic, and national background. They come from places as diverse as Djibouti,
Somalia, Senegal, Republic of Congo (previously Zare), South Africa, Gabon, and
Togo. With no exception, all of the African students in M.V. are at least trilingual:
English, French, and mother tongue or first language, with various (postcolonial)
histories of language learning and degrees of fluency in each language.

On my return to M.V. in January of 1996 to conduct my research, I spent the first

month undirectedly talking to and hanging out with different gender and age groups
of African youths; this was of course with their permission as well as their parents
and the school administrations. During this month, I attended classes, played
basketball, volleyball, and indoor soccer, and generally hung out with the students.
After having spent a month getting to know the students in this way, I then chose
16 students for extensive ethnographic observation: 10 boys and 6 girls. I followed
them in and outside classroom and in and outside the school. I interviewed all 16.
Of the 10 boys, six were Somali speakers (from Somalia and Djibouti), one
Ethiopian, two Senegalese, and one from Togo. Their ages ranged from 16-20. The 6
girls, on the other hand, were all Somali speakers (also from Somalia and Djibouti),
aged from 14 to 18 years.

I conducted individual interviews as well as two focus-group interviews, one with the
boys and one with the girls. They were all conducted in the school grounds, with the
exception of the boys focus group interview which took place in one of the
students residence. Students were given the option to conduct the interviews in the
language of their choice: some were in English, but the majority were in French. I
translated these into English. The only Black counselor and the former Black teacher
were also interviewed. The interviews were closely transcribed and analyzed. School
documents and archives were consulted and I occasionally videotaped cultural and
sport activities; on two occasions, tape recorders were given to students to capture
those natural interactions among themselves (Rampton, 1995).

RESEARCH CONTENTIONS

My central working contention is that, once in North America, continental African

youths enter a social imaginary, a discursive space, a representation where they are
already constructed, imagined, positioned, and thus are to be treated by the
hegemonic discourses and dominant groups, respectively, as Blacks. Here, I am
addressing the white (racist) everyday communicative state of mind: Oh, they all
look like Blacks to me!. It is a positionality offered to continental African youths
through net-like praxis in exceedingly complex and mostly subconscious ways, a
positionality which does not, and is unwilling to, acknowledge students' ethnic,
language, national, and cultural identity difference. This net-like praxis is brilliantly
summed up when Fanon writes about himself as a Black Antillais coming to the
metropolis of Paris. "I am given no chance", he posits, "I am overdetermined from
without... And already I am being dissected under white eyes, the only real eyes. I
am fixed. Having adjusted their microtomes, they objectively cut away slices of my
reality" (1967, p. 116; my italics).

In other words, continental African youths find themselves in a racially conscious

society which, wittingly or unwittingly and through fused social mechanisms such as
racisms and representations, asks them to racially fit somewhere. To fit somewhere
signifies choosing or becoming aware of ones own being, which is partially
reflected in ones language practice. Choosing is a question of agency; that is, by
virtue of being a subject, one possesses a room to maneuver ones own desires and
choices. My point put otherwise is that although a social subject may count her/his
desires and choices as hers/his, these choices are disciplined (Foucault, 1979) by
the social conditions under which the subject lives. For example, to be Black in a
racially conscious society like the Euro-Canadian and American society signifies one
is expected to be Black, act Black and so be the Other, the marginalized (Hall, 1991;
hooks, 1992). Under such disciplinary social conditions, as I will show, continental
African youths express their moments of identification in relation to African
Americans and African American cultures and languages. They are thus to become
Blacks. Taking up rap/hip hop and speaking BSE is by no means a coincidence. On
the contrary, these are articulations of the youths desire to belong to a location,
politics, memory, history, and hence representation.

Being is being distinguished here from becoming. The former is an accumulative

memory, an experience, and an apprehension upon which one interacts with the
world around her/him, whereas the latter is the process of building this
apprehension, this memory. For example, as a continental, I was not Black in
Africa, though I had other adjectives that used to bricolage my identity, such as tall,
Sudanese, basketball player, etc. However, as a refugee in North America, my
perception of self was altered in direct response to the social processes of racism
and the historical representation of blackness whereby the antecedent signifiers
became secondary to my blackness, and I retranslated my self: I became Black.

BECOMING TRI/MULTILINGUAL: SITES/SIDES OF ESL LEARNING

For most francophone African youths, coming to a Canadian English speaking

metropolis, such as Vancouver or Winnipeg, is a decision taken by their parents who
themselves are bound by circumstances of having relatives in that city. I inquired
why an English speaking city might be considered as a place of sojourn as opposed
to Quebec which is a French speaking province:
Hassan : First of all, we had relatives who were here. Yes, secondly, because there is
French and English. It is more the relative question because you know when you go
to a new country, there is a tendency to go towards the people you know. Because
you dont want to adventure in the unknown; and you cant have, you also want to
get help, all the help possible to succeed better.

In this context where English is the medium of everyday interaction, African youths
are compelled or expected to speak (in) English if they are to be understood, if they
are to be able to perform simple daily functions like negotiating public transport and
buying groceries. In the following excerpt, Aziza renarrates (in French) and
remembers her early days when her English speech competence was limited:

If I want to go to the boutique, I have to speak to the guy (Monsieur) in English

because he doesnt speak French. If I go to the shop to buy clothes, I have to speak
in English, you see. It is something that you have to; you have to force yourself. In
the early days, I used to go with my sister because my sister spoke English. So, I
always took her with me. Then, I had to go by myself because she was not always
going to be by my side. I had to speak, I had to learn to speak English so I can help
myself and I can you know, I can deal with anything you see. So, in other words, you
are obliged, it is something you cant escape from. Because the society is
anglophone, the country is anglophone, the services are in English, you see, thats
why.
For the youths, the inescapability of interacting in English translates into a will to
rapidly learn English. Popular culture, especially television, friendship, and peer
interactive pressure are three mechanisms that hasten the speed of learning. The
peer pressure was felt more-so in African students early days in the school when
they were denigrated for not speaking English. Franco-Ontarian students, Heller
(1994, 1992) explains, use English in their everyday interaction, especially outside
classrooms. This means that if African students want to participate in school public
spaces as well as in-and-outside classroom activities, they are left with no option
but to learn English. Once it is learned, English becomes as much a medium of
communication as it is a source of pride:

Asma : If you dont speak English, like in my grade 7, "Oh, she doesnt speak! Oh,
we are sorry, you can explain to her, she doesnt understand English la petite . Can
you?" They think that we are really stupid, that we are retarded (sic), that we dont
understand the language. Now I know English, I speak it all the time. I show them
that I understand English (laughs), I show them that I do English. Oh, I got it, it gives
me great pleasure.

Asma is addressing, first, the condescending teachers manner of speech when the
latter realized that Asma did not speak English. Undoubtedly, this leads to more
pressure on Asma and African students in general to learn English. Secondly, her
narrative addresses the threshold desire of a teenager who wants to fully participate
in dominant markets and public spaces. This full participation was obstructed by an
inability to speak English which is the way to deploy and organize friendships. Yet,
the deployment of friendship, and even learning English, is influenced by the
popular imaginary, popular representation, popular culture: television. I asked
students in all of the interviews "O est-ce que vous avez appris votre anglais?"
[From where did you learn your English?]. "Tlvision," they unanimously responded.
However, within this tlvision, there is a particular representation that seems to
interpellate (Althusseur, 1971) African youths identity and identification: Black
popular culture. Since African youths have a very limited number of African
American friends and have limited daily contact with them, they access Black
cultural identities and Black linguistic practice in and through Black popular culture,
especially rap music video-clips, television programs and Black cinematic
representations. Responding to my query about the last movies she saw, Najat cited
(in English):

Najat: I dont know, I saw Waiting to Exhale and I saw what else I saw, I saw
Swimmer, and I saw Jumanji; so wicked, all the movies. I went to Waiting to Exhale
wid my boyfriend and I was like men are rude (laughs).
Awad: Oh believe me I know I know.
Najat: And den he [her boyfriend] was like no women are rude. I was like were like
fighting you know and joking around. I was like and de whole time like (laughs), and
den when de woman burns the car, I was like "go girl!". You know and all the women
are like "go girl!" you know? And den de men like khhh. Im like "Im gonna go get
me a pop corn" (laughs).
Najats example is illustrative because, besides showing the influence of Black
English in using de, den, dat, and wicked as opposed to, respectively, the,
then, that, and really really good, it articulates the notion that youths have
agency and social subjectivities which they bring to the reading of the text. These
subjectivities, importantly, are embedded in history, culture, and memory. Two
performed subjectivities that influence Najats reading of Waiting to Exhale are,
precisely, her race and gender identities. Respectively, it is with blackness,
embodied in a female body, that Najat identified; it is the Black/woman in burning
her husbands car and clothes that interpellates Najat.

In a different context, another example that demonstrates the impact of Black

popular culture on African students lives and identities is a moment videotaped just
before the focus-group interview with the boys. Picture this: Electric Circus, a local
T.V. music and dance program that plays mostly Black music (rap/hip hop, reggae,
soul and R&B) had just started. Silence!, one boy requested in French. Attentively,
the boys started to listen to the music and watch the different fashions that the
youngsters on T.V. were putting on. Codeswitched conversations in French, English,
and Somali occurred after the show. They were largely observations on what was
the best music, the best dance, and the cutest girl. Rap/hip hop dress were
obviously the top two of the best music and dress.

The moments of identification in the above examples are significant in that they
point to the process of identity formation which is implicated in turn in the linguistic
norm to be learned. The Western hegemonic representations of blackness, Hall
(1990) shows, are negative and tend to work alongside historical and subconscious
memories which facilitate their interpretations by members of the dominant groups.
Once African youths encounter these negative representations, they look for Black
cultural and representational forms as sites for positive identity formation and
identification (Kelly, 1998). It is rather crucial to see identification working over a
period of time and at the subconscious level. Omer in the following excerpt from an
individual interview addresses the myriad ways in which African youths are
influenced by Black representations.

Black Canadian youths are influenced by the Afro-Americans. You watch for hours,
you listen to Black music, you watch Black comedy, Mr. T., the Rap City, there you
will see singers who dress in particular ways. You see, so.
Again, in my focus group interview with the boys, Mukhi explored the contention of
identification by arguing that:

We identify ourselves more with the Blacks of America. But, this is normal, this is
genetic. We cant, since we live in Canada, we cant identify ourselves with Whites
or country music you know (laughs). We are going to identify ourselves on the
contrary with people of our color, who have our life style you know.
Mukhi evokes biology and genetic connection as a way of relating to Black America,
and his identification with it is clearly stated. For Mukhi and all the students I spoke
to, this is certainly connected to their inability to relate to dominant groups, the
public spaces they occupy, and their cultural forms and norms. Alternatively, Black
popular culture emerges as a site not only for identification, but also as a space for
language learning. In the following section, I point to how rap is an influential site
for language learning. However, since rap linguistic performance was more
prevalent in the boys narratives than in the girls, I will raise the question of gender
in the process of identification and learning.

AAIT [aayet], Q7 IN THE HOUSE!

On many occasions, the boys performed - that is, linguistic as well as bodily
performance - typical gangster rap language and style, including name calling.
What follows are just two of the many occasions where students articulated their
identification with Black America through citation of rap linguistic styles. These
examples occurred in English during my focus-group interview with the boys:

1) Sam: One two, one two, mic check. Aait, aait, aait.
Juma: This is the rapper, you know wha m meaning? You know wha m saying?
Sam: Mic mic mic; mic check. Aait you wonna test it? Ah, Ive the microphone you
know; aait.

2) Sam: (laughs) I dont rap man, cmon give me a break. (laughs) Yo! Aait aait you
know, we just about to finish de tape and all dat. Respect to my main man [Sam
was pointing towards me]. So, you know, you know wha m mean, m just
represenin Q7. One love to Q7 you know wha m mean and all my friends back to
Q7... Stop the tapin boy!
Jamal : Kim Juma, live! Put the lights on. Wordap. [Students are talking in Somali.]
Peace out, wardap, where de book. Jamal am outa here.
Shapir : Yo, this is Shapir. I am trying to say peace to all my Niggers, all my bitches
from a background that everybody in the house. So, yo, chill out and this is how we
gonna kick it. Bye and with that pie. All right, peace yo.
Sam: Aait this is Sam represenin AQA [...] where its born, represenin you know
wha m mean? I wonna say whassup to all my Niggers, you know, peace and one
love. You know wha m mean, Q7 represenin forever. Peace! [Rap music.]
Jamal [as a DJ]: Crank it man, coming up [rap music].

Of interest in these excerpts is the use of Black stylized English, particularly the
language of rap: Respect for my main man, represenin Q7, kick the free style,
peace out, wardap, am outa here, I am trying to say peace to all my Niggers, all
my bitches, so, yo chill out, and this is how we gonna kick it, peace and one
love, I wonna say whassup to all my Niggers. On the other hand, when Shapir
offers peace to all his Niggers, all his bitches, he is firstly re-appropriating the
word Nigger as an appellation which is common in rap/hip hop culture. That is,
although no consensus, it is common that a friend, especially young people, calls
another Black friend Nigger, without its heavy traditional use as a racist slur.
Secondly, however, Shapir is using the sexist language that might exist in rap (Rose,
1991). These forms of sexism have been challenged by female rappers like Queen
Latifa and Salt n Pepper. They were also critiqued by fellow female and male
students. For example, in my interview with the girls, Samira, a 16 year old girl from
Djibouti, expressed her dismay at the sexist language found in some rap circles. She
cited (in French): "OK, hip hop, yes I know that everyone likes hip hop. They dress in
a certain way, no? The songs go well. But, they are really really, they have
expressions like fuck, bitches etc. Sorry, but there is representation." Here,
Samira is addressing the larger societal impact which these expressions might have
on how the Black female body is related to and perceived, which in turn influences
how it is represented in, but also outside, rap/hip hop culture. Hassan as well
expressed his disapproval of this abused/abusive language: "occasionally, rap has
an inappropriate language for the life in which we live, a world of violence and all
that."

In rap style, one starts his/her performance by checking the mic: One two, one
two, check mic check. Then, the rapper either cites an already composed lyric or
otherwise kicks a free style. Spontaneity is what rap is all about. In general, the
rapper begins the public performance by introducing her/himself with her/his true or
made-up name - yo this is Shapir - and thanks her/his main man, her/his best
friend, who often introduces her/him to the public. Specific to gangster rap, one
does not only represent oneself, but a web of geo-physical and metaphorical spaces
and collectivities which are demarcated by people and territorial spaces:
represenin Q7, aait, this is Sam represenin AQA. At the end of the performance
when the citation or the free style is completed, again one thanks her/his main
man and gives peace out or shad out (shout out) to his/her people. The boys are
clearly influenced by rap lyrics, syntax and morphology (in their broader
semiological sense) and, in particular, gangster rap. In learning ESL in general and
BSE in particular through music, Jamal used significant strategies. These include
listening, reading and repeating. For example, Jamal was listening to the tunes/lyrics
while simultaneously reading and following the written text. Acting as a DJ, he then
repeated with the performer not only words and expressions, but also accents.

The girls, on the other hand, had an ambivalent relationship to rap, depending on
their age, although they used the same strategies as Jamal in learning English
through music. For example, during the picnic organized by a mixed group of males
and females to which I was invited, females were listening to the musical tunes and
at the same time following the written text and reciting it (complete with accents)
along with the singer. The girls choice of music (including Whitney Houston and Toni
Braxton) differed in that it was softer, and was concerned mostly with romantic
themes.

For the most part, the older females (16 to 18 years old) tended to be more eclectic
in how they related to hip hop and rap. Their eclecticism was evident in how they
dressed and in what language they learned. Their dress was either elegant middle
class, or partially hip hop, or traditional; and their learned language was what M.
Nourbese Philip (1991) called in her novel Harriets Daughter "plain Canadian
English." The younger females (12-14 years), on the other hand, were more similar
to the boys. They dressed hip hop style and performed the BSE.
In spite of their ambivalent relation vis--vis rap and hip hop, I was able to detect
the following three features of Black English (BE) in the girls speech, across age: 1)
the absence of the auxiliary "be," 2) BE negative concord, and 3) the distributive
"be" (for BE features, see Labov, 1972; Goldstein, 1987). The first feature, identified
on nineteen occasions, is when a girl cites "they so cool," "I just laughing" as
opposed to they are so cool, I am just laughing. I noticed the second feature on
four occasions. This is when a female contends "... all he [the teacher] cares about
is his daughter you know. If somebody just dies or if I decide to shoot somebody you
know, he is not doing nothing" (italics added). This female would have been
corrected in Standard English for having a double negative. The third feature which I
also observed on four occasions is when a female utters "I be saying dis dat you
know?" or "He be like Oh, elle va tre bien ..." These BE markers are expressions of
the influence of Black talk in the females speech and simultaneously performances
of their identity location and desire, which they undoubtedly ally with blackness.

PERFORMING ACTS OF DESIRE

Rap and hip hop have been identified as influential sites in African students
processes of becoming Black, which in turn impacts on what they learned and how.
Their narratives, moreover, show that youths are quite cognizant of their
identification with blackness and the impact of race on their choices. In my focus-
group interview with the boys, by way of illustration, I had this conversation in
English with Sam and Mukhi, in which Mukhi reflected on the impact of rap (as just
one among so many other Black popular cultural forms) on his life and other lives
around him:

Awad: But do you listen to rap for example? I noticed that there are a number of
students who listen to rap eh? Is ...
Sam: It is not just us who listen to rap, everybody listens to rap. It is new.
Awad: But do you think that that influences how you speak, how ...
Mukhi: How we dress, how we speak, how we behave [bold added].
These linguistic behavioral patterns and dress codes that Mukhi is addressing are
accessed and learned by African youths through Black popular culture. They do not,
as I already noted, ask for mastery and fluency. Indeed, they are performative acts
of desire and identification. As Amani contended in my focus-group interview with
the girls:
We have to wonder why we try to really follow the model of the Americans who are
Blacks? Because when you search for yourself, search for identification, you search
for someone who reflects you, with whom you have something in common [italics
added].
Again, in my individual interview with Hassan, he lends support to Amani by arguing
that:
Hassan: Yes yes, African students are influenced by rap and hip hop because they
want to, yes they are influenced probably a bit more because it is the desire to
belong may be.
Awad: Belong to what?
Hassan: To a group, belong to a society, to have a model/fashion [un model]; you
know, the desire to mark oneself, the desire to make, how do I say it? To be part of a
rap society, you see. It is like getting into rock and roll or heavy metal.

Hence, one invests in where one sees oneself mirrored. Such an investment
includes linguistic as well as cultural behavioral patterns. Hassan, in an individual
interview, would find it an unrealistic expectation to see blackness allied with Rock
and Roll or Heavy Metal as they are socially constructed as white musics. On the
other hand, he would emphatically argue that African youths would have every
reason to invest in basketball - constructed as Black sport - and not hockey, for
example.

BY WAY OF CONCLUDING: IDENTITY, DISCIPLINE, AND PEDAGOGY

Analogously, African youths desire to invest (Peirce, 1997), particularly the boys, in
basketball is no different from their desire to learn Black English as a Second
Language. Learning is hence neither aimless nor neutral nor is it without the politics
of identity. As I have shown, to learn a second language can have a marginalized
linguistic norm as a target, depending on who is learning what, why and how. This
raises the questions: Why would youths choose the margin as a target? What is
their investment and politics in doing so? And what role, if any, do race, gender
(sexuality) and class social differences play in their choices? In other words, if
youths do come to our classrooms as embodied subjectivities, which are embedded
in history and memory (Dei, 1996), should we as pedagogues not couple their word
with their world (Freire, 1970/1993)?

Clearly, this is an interdisciplinary paper. It may have raised more questions than it
has satisfyingly answered them. However, it is meant to ask new questions that link
identity, pedagogy, politics, investment, desire and the process of ESL learning. It
borrows greatly from cultural studies. In it, I discussed how a group of continental
African youths were becoming Blacks, which meant learning BESL. Becoming Black,
I have argued, was an identity signifier produced by and producing the very process
of BESL. To become Black is to become an ethnographer who translates and looks
around him/her in an effort to understand what it means to be Black in Canada, for
example. In doing so, African youths were/are interpellated by Black popular cultural
forms, rap and hip hop, as sites of identification. Gender however was/is as
important as race in what was/is being chosen, translated, by whom, and how.
Choosing the margin, it should be emphasized, is an investment act, an expression
of desire, and simultaneously a deliberate counter hegemonic undertaking.
Choosing especially rap cannot not be read as an act of resistance. Historically, rap
is formed as a voice to voicelessness and performed as a prophetic language that
addresses the silence/d/ness. It explores the hopes and the human, political,
historical, and cultural experience of the Black Atlantic (Gilroy, 1993); and as Jamal
argues (in French), "Black Americans created rap to express themselves; how do I
say it? their ideas, their problems, [and] if we could integrate ourselves into it, it is
because rappers speak about or they have the same problems we have." Such may
include human degradation, police brutality, and everyday racisms (Essed, 1991;
Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1992).

If learning, I conclude, is an identity engagement, a fulfillment of personal needs

and desires (of being), an investment in what is yet to come, any proposed ESL
pedagogy, research, or praxis that fails to culminate in these, will quite obviously
not involve the youths. It is therefore bound to be unsuccessful, if not plainly
damaging. Identity, as it is re-pre-configured here, governs what ESL learners
acquire and how. What is linguistically learned is not, and should not be, dissociable
from the political, the social, and the cultural. Hence, to learn is to invest into
something (e.g., BESL); something which has a personal or a particular significance
to who one is or what one has become. Since language is never neutral, learning it
then cant and shouldnt be either. If this is so, then it is necessary that we as
teachers, first, identify the different sites where our students invest their identities
and desires and, second, develop curriculum materials that would engage our
students raced, classed, gendered, sexualized, and abled identities.

In conclusion, therefore, I want to identify and propose rap/hip hop (and Black
popular culture in general) as curriculum sites where learning can and does take
place and where identities are invested. In the language of anti-racism education
(Dei, 1996; hooks, 1994), this proposition is, on the one hand, a call to centralize
and engage our marginalized subjects, their voices, and their ways of being and
learning and, on the other, a revisit to this question: In the case of African youths,
whose language and identity are we teaching/assuming in the classroom if we do
not engage rap/hip hop? That is, whose knowledge is being valorized and
legitimated and thus assumed to be worth of study and whose knowledge and
identity are left in the corridors and the hallways of our schools? To identify rap/hip
hop as curriculum sites in this context then is to legitimize otherwise illegitimate
forms of knowledge. As Bourdieu (1991) shows, wittingly or unwittingly, schools
sanction certain identities and accept their linguistic norm by nothing more than
assuming them to be the norm; we should be reminded that these identities are
raced, classed, sexualized, and gendered.

However, since rap and hip hop are also historical and social productions, they are
as much sites of critique as they are of hope. As we have seen, rap/hip hop are not
immune to, for example, sexism (and homophobia, see also Rose, 1991). They can
not, therefore, and should not be readily consumed; they are to be critically framed,
studied, and engaged with. To be able to do so, however, teachers need to first be
in tune with popular culture, since T.V., music, newspapers, etc. are increasingly the
sources where our students learn their English and not the classroom. Second, in
cases of infamiliarity with popular culture, I believe, teachers should not fear to
engage the Freireian notion of dialecticism, where our students can become our
teachers. In practical terms, this might mean planning activities where our students
will share with us and the rest of the class what is rap and hip hop and what they
represent to them.
On the other hand, rap/hip hop are also sites of hope and possibilities: A hope that
all learners (from dominant groups or otherwise) can be introduced to, and be able
to see, different possibilities and multiple ways of speaking, of being, and of
learning. In the case of African students, in particular, rap/hip hop are sites of
identification and investment. To introduce them in the classroom, in Paulo Freires
words (1970/1993), is to hope to link their world, identities, and desires with their
word. To put it more broadly, may be the time has come to put to rest that
schizophrenic split which minority students live through between their identities and
the school curriculum, and their identities and the classroom pedagogies, subjects
and materials.