Sitting on the porch choppin’ it up. HipHop and sports “go hand in hand”: a rap session with Michael Eric Dyson, PhD

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Introduction
The canon of traditional academia has gradually expanded in the last six decades. Since the Black Arts Movement exploded in 1965, African American literature has represented a challenge to the widely accepted Eurocentric narratives taught in American universities. Situated within the Black Power Movement, the artists and intellectuals in the Black Arts Movement aligned their music, literature, drama, and visual arts with the ideologies of Black self-determination, racial pride, economic empowerment, and the creation of political and cultural institutions (1). While the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s produced many artists and writers who focused their work on the political injustices of the time, Gates (2) specifically noted the Black Women's Literary Renaissance of the 1970s (i.e., Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou) as a key factor in broadening the validity of accepted academic narratives.
Since then, the legacy of the Black Arts Movement has made way for intellectuals in other fields to disrupt the center of traditional academia's Eurocentric narratives. In particular, as the revenue of college sports has increased, the field of sport sociology has exponentially grown to include Black perspectives. Sport sociologists have written scholarship through the prism of Black Americans to illustrate phenomena such as racial identity development (3)(4)(5), masculinity (6, 7), stereotypes (8)(9)(10)(11), activism (12)(13)(14), academic reform (15)(16)(17), academic performance and achievement (18)(19)(20)(21), religion (22,23), and antideficit frameworks (24,25). The rigorous study of sport sociology has created a space for academic credibility: It is a thing of wonder to behold the various ways in which our specialties and the works we explicate and teach have moved, if not exactly from the margins to the center of the profession of literature, at least from defensive postures to a position of generally accepted validity (2, p. 11).
Black narratives are abundant in movements that resist racism and oppression in America. Two fields that intentionally disrupt political and cultural consciousness are sport and HipHop. To demonstrate the validity of this challenge, two scholar-activists discuss the relationship between HipHop and sport as a cultural, theoretical, and global phenomenon.

Background
Each of the Black male professors featured in this documented dialog has made major contributions to Black literature and education. Both men continue to be recognized for their distinguished innovation through awards and fellowships (see Figure 1).
Professor Professor Michael Eric Dyson after his PhD at Princeton took academe, culture, and higher education by storm with his pulse for African American studies among other intellectual pursuits. In essence, he pushed the "status quo" with his passionate knowledge and unprecedented wordsmith abilities. On a personal level, his book "Between God and Gangsta Rap" was lifechanging for the first author. In 1996 after his first year as a fulltime faculty member at Washington State University, he attended the National Black Graduate Student Conference at Claremont, CA. During Professor Dyson's keynote, he witnessed the synergy and merger of higher education, sports, HipHop, and much more. Dyson's attire was a three-piece suit with Michael Jordan sneakers on, better known as "J's." The point of all this is that Dr. Dyson made it cool to study HipHop in the academe, joining other pioneers such as Drs. Tricia Rose, Robin D.G. Kelley, and Cheryl L. Keyes. In short, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson made school cool, and this one-on-one interview attempts to capture his sagacity on the topic and HipHop/Sport.

Interview transcript
Professor Harrison: Professor Dyson, great to see you! Professor Dyson: Good to see you too, bro! Professor Harrison: The first question is: Why is a book read like this on education, HipHop and Sport: The Fifth Element timely and possibly timeless?
Professor Dyson: Well, it is incredibly important, timely right now, because sports and HipHop have gone hand in hand and forging connections between young Black men especially, who are stars in one arena who identify with stars, and another. So, people who are active in the political, in the sports arena, the athletic arena identify with rappers, rappers identify with ballers, ballers want to be rappers, rappers want to be ballers right? Magic Johnson said the same thing on Arsenio Hall. So, you Frontiers in Sports and Active Living know when you think about this is the fifth element right? That kind of knowledge, that kind of sports, that kind of education, and the convergence of those is extremely important now because we can interpret so much of what's going on with Black men athletically through the lens of HipHop. The ideas, the identities, the freedom, the hairstyles, the clothing style, the sartorial choices, all of that deeply imbued with a consciousness of HipHop culture and the freedom and liberty and emancipation which those styles and that appropriation give rise. It's timeless because constantly we have to think about that interaction, that convergence, and how it will forever impact how we know, think of, and look at young Black men. HipHop culture [is] 40 years old now maybe, but it has a deep and profound impact on expressive and athletic culture within African American society. And it is exploded exponentially beyond the borders and boundaries of Black masculinity itself. It articulates Black masculine style, desire, and ambition, but it also corrals people in from broader society into privileged circle of communication and expression among these Black men and women. And how it allows Black pop culture to be a forum to argue about, or at least engage in discussions over, the importance of Black identity. So, it is extremely timely and timeless.
Professor Harrison: And you've answered my second question Professor Dyson. I was going to ask about the intersectionality between HipHop and Sports. You've already hit that.
Professor Dyson: Thank you, sir. Professor Harrison: Welcome. I co-teach a class with Reggie Saunders on the "Business of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Sport." You know he works at the Jordan Brand. Why is it important that two academics-my colleague and former Ph.D. student Eddie Comeaux, the first editor, me the second coeditor-and both pulled Reggie in on this project? Why is it important, Professor Dyson, to have someone like Reggie involved in academia? In a book like this.
Professor Dyson: Yeah well, 'cause Reggie played and knows the game from all sides (e.g., business, culture, sports).
Professor Harrison: Reggie is the Jordan's right-hand man with sneakers.
Professor Dyson: Right exactly, well that is extremely important. Because you know people who are in the world of converse people who are in the world of creative ideas that lead to subsequent development of actual products. You know, are extremely important in helping to bridge the gulf between theory and practice. You know, how is it that ideals and ideas about Blackness, about Black masculine flare, flavor the wide receiver on the gridiron, a bit flagrant. And, you know engaging in what one would see as exaggerated behavior.
How is it that Black masculine style, in basketball with a kind of "moxie" the "chutzpah," the kind of you know flare, the kind of charisma? Some would see it as arrogance but beautiful expressions and articulations of Black masculine style. How does that get reproduced and commodified-reproduced and commodified in a culture where products are the result of an imagination? And how does that Black imagination work? And how do we bridge the gulf between what we think of as a cultural articulation and subsequent commercial expression of that articulation? [It] is very good for brother Saunders to be there because he works on the cutting edge of trying to figure these products out and working with arguably the greatest, iconic figure within sports in the last half-century.

Coda
In 1996, I attended the National Black Graduate Student Conference in Claremont, CA. Professor Michael Eric Dyson gave the keynote in a suit with his "J's" [Jordan brand shoes] on. In contemporary society, sneakers are the trend and thing to wear on your 'fit regardless of how casual or dressed up one is. This was Dr. Dyson's statement of education, HipHop, and sport over 25 years ago. How educationally dope!!

Author contributions
All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.