How can hip-hop and opportunity help kids grow in their education?

Crime is a pain point in Hamden. To address and eventually fix the issue, it is imperative the community looks at the underlying reasons why, said Dr. Don Sawyer, chief diversity officer and associate professor at Quinnipiac University, during a panel on Thursday night, Feb. 25.

The virtual “Hip-Hop and Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline” panel discussion — led by The Hamden Department of Arts and Culture — featured Sawyer, Frank E. Brady, Dr. Lauren Kelly, Frederick Douglass-Knowles II, Dr. Tasha Iglesias and Devon Glover “Sonnet Man.” 

The panelists, who all work or have worked with children and teenagers in impoverished communities, spoke about the impact of hip-hop and art on younger age groups. 

“Hip-hop is sociology. Hip-hop is psychology,” said Brady, founder and executive director of F.E.B Communications. “It’s a web that brings so many people together, regardless of class. Orientation, backgrounds. It brings people together.”

While addressing the impact of hip-hop nationwide — with the panelists explaining how they’ve used hip-hop in and outside the classroom — the panel got started as a way for Hamden residents to understand the divides in their local community.  

For instance, Hamden saw a rise in crime by 11% in 2019 year over year, according to City-Data.com, and Hamden residents have tried to figure out ways to overcome the systematic problem.

“I don’t think hip hop is going to solve the problem of rising crime rates,” Sawyer told HQNN. “And I also don’t think that hip hop is the reason for the rise of crime rates.”

In order to fix the crime rates instead, Sawyer said it’s imperative the community looks at the underlying issue. Kids would not be breaking into cars and committing illegal activity if their needs were being met, he explained. Instead, the Hamden youth needs to feel a connection with others so that they have the opportunity to get off of the so-called pipeline. 

“How do we get people opportunities?” said Sawyer. “We can’t compare students who are growing up in an impoverished neighborhood, in New Haven, to students who are living in an affluent neighborhood in Fairfield County. They live in the same state, but their opportunities are not the same.” 

The “pipeline” Sawyer refers to led the panel’s conversation on Thursday, which is the assumption that students in impoverished areas will eventually drop out of school and get into trouble that will end them up in prison. 

The Connecticut Department of Corrections listed 9,050 in the state’s prisons and jails on Feb. 1. Forty-four percent (4,016 inmates) identified as Black.

“We have to look at the base and see what people are responding to, what is the context of their existence,” he said. “That’s shaping the choices that they feel that they need to make.”

While not a one-and-done solution, the panelists believe hip-hop can provide creative outlets to lead students away from the prison pipeline. 

Glover, a performance artist for The Sonnet Man, worked with a student he said broke out of her shell after getting the opportunity to introduce herself and share her work. 

“That’s one of the reasons why I continued this goal, you know, getting them to realize their potential,” said Glover.  

Hip-hop fuels the conversation in their classrooms, the panelists agreed, although love and compassion are also two growing key themes.

“It was just really powerful for me to learn from these young people about how they understood love,” Kelly said, “and how they’re experiencing love, and then how they were allowing each other to hold space for each other to think about, like how they’ve learned and grown as individuals sort of falling in and out of love.”

Sawyer said he has a few questions for Hamden residents to stop and think about, asking “who do you want moving back into your neighborhood?”

“Do you want someone who hasn’t been reformed?” he asked. “Who has an education, who has the ability to work, and come back to being a tax-paying citizen, right, that’s what we want? So you think it’s separate from you, but it’s not like we’re not all connected, and in some way, shape or form. And unless we see that, nothing changes.”