An Ode to Black Pop Culture of the 1970s
I do not own the copyright/licenses to the content below. It is not for used solely for personal, but is used for an educational demonstration. This is literally from my class as I teach it.
While teaching a particular rhetorical strategy for writing, I use Black popular culture of the 1970s. I introduce them to the 1970s for a reason: students’ over-consumption of contemporary media and their lack of even popular historical knowledge creates a vacuum in which they know nothing of Black entertainers’ striving for equality in Hollywood.
Okay, I can confess this. In my class, all roads lead to African American Studies, even Composition I! I feel comfortable using Black culture to teach just about everything, because of the way I view the cultural contributions and the issues that affect Black people has somehow tangential to American culture at large and academia more specifically. Black American culture is American culture. Period. No arguments. African American culture is weaved in the very fabric of the country’s founding and Black culture certainly should not be relegated to the realm of academic exotica. It is, for all intensive purposes, as American as apple pie and should be normalized through daily, cultural exposure and not the horror stories on the 6 o’clock nightly news.
When I teach particular rhetorical strategies, I use examples from Black culture. One such rhetorical strategy is the exemplification paper. This is a paper that uses examples as THE main writing strategy. I use Black popular culture of the 1970s.
Why this era? Everything we see today, as far as Black cultural production is concerned, rests upon the 1970s. Sadly, because our students are Americans and subject to that famous American amnesia, many of them have never been exposed to the Afro-wearing, stack shoes, big band sound, Blaxploitation of the 1970s. They do not understand that Kevin Hart is a prodigy of Richard Pryor. They do not know that the reruns of Martin that they enjoy owes much of its stylistic points to Sanford & Son. They don’t even know that RAP music as we know it was born in the late 1970s and was considered a part of the disco scene.
In movies, television shows, music, and comedy the 1970s mark a watershed moment for African Americans. It was like somebody woke up one day and said, “African Americans like seeing images of themselves that don’t involve buffoonery or subservience. Who knew?”
Of course, I do not show college freshmen the very first movie with a Black director and producer, Black actors, and a Black environment. That would be Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song, released in 1971.
While I may be a cutting-edge professor, I do like my job. This particular film has just about enough sex in it for me to be fired from even the most liberal institutions! Students can watch it on their own time. In addition to Sweetback, I introduce them to Foxy Brown. The guys really seem to perk up and become interested in class once they see the beautiful, larger-than-life photos of Pam Grier on the screen.
Furthermore, I teach in the Memphis metro area. Sadly, many of the Black students in this area, which is 67% African American, do not know and have never heard of the contributions that Black people from Memphis have made to America. Many of the students have graduated from the famed Manassas High School, and they share a history with the ultimate manly man from the 1970s, but have not heard of him or his music.
They do not know that Isaac Hayes wrote THE song to the manliest man movie of all time, Shaft, and was the first African American in recent history to receive a major award for composition. They all get to sing along as I play the theme song.
Last, students have no idea that one of the greatest bands of all of music history is actually a product of Memphis: Earth, Wind, and Fire.
The leader of Earth, Wind, and Fire, the late Maurice White, was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and so was the late Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin.
After this particular module, Black students from Memphis have a little more pride in themselves and the cultural contributions of Memphis. Sadly, all they ever see on the 6 o’clock news is Black criminality, and there is no public HBCU within a 3-hour driving radius of the city. Students here do not even have the pleasure of taking pride in big sounds and precision marching.
Upon taking my class, many of my students become absolutely OBSESSED with the 1970s. For the first time, they learn that sex happened before 1995. For the first time, I see their chests swell with something they have never felt before: positive pride in themselves and Black America at large. And while my pay as an adjunct may be dismal, seeing my students grow and change with one rhetorical strategy is absolutely priceless.
This entry comes directly from my Composition I class. If you like it, press the hands. Or, I will see you in class.
