The great divide

Tensions are simmering between the civil rights and hip-hop generations. Can they close the gap?

The furor over the name of rapper Nas's forthcoming CD perfectly illustrates the divide between the civil rights generation and the younger hip-hop generation, which has benefited from the social advances the elders fought for.

Nas announced in October that he would use a certain racial slur as the title of his 10th CD, which will be released in February - Black History Month. The news came a few months after the NAACP had shown its disapproval of the word by holding a mock funeral for it during its convention in Detroit.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson and representatives of the NAACP quickly criticized Nas's decision. In response, Nas told MTV News, "If Cornel West was making an album called [racial slur], they would know he's got something intellectual to say. To think I'm gonna say something that's not intellectual is calling me a [slur], and to be called a [slur] by Jesse Jackson and the NAACP is counterproductive, counterrevolutionary."

Tension between the hip-hop and civil rights generations has been brewing since C. Delores Tucker began complaining about the content of rap lyrics in the 1990s. Lately these clashes have become more frequent. Some members of the younger generation criticize older leaders such as Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton for demonizing hip-hop and focusing on the use of the racial slur rather than addressing social ills, such as black-on-black crime or high dropout rates. The other side is represented by such people as actor and activist Bill Cosby, who in his 2007 book "Come On People" blamed the crisis in the poor black community on "the gangsta rap industry and their white enablers."

Recently, six local representatives of these opposing generations sat down at the Globe's request to discuss what's driving a wedge between them. During a three-hour conversation, they moved beyond the surface issues of acceptable words and the influence of hip-hop music to explore the changes in society that have brought the black community to its current state. They discussed the impact of a materialistic society, the effect of the urban public-education system on youths, and the lack of a common sociopolitical goal within the community.

"There's a real difference, and I don't think it's about the music," says Mel King, a longtime community activist and former state representative who now heads the South End Technology Center. "We were involved in the '60s, the '50s. It was like a common direction. The common direction was the civil rights movement, desegregation - it was very clear."

Now the goals are murkier. Although desegregation occurred, it failed to remove underlying problems.

"Racism has become so multifaceted," says Chris Conroy, 25, a teaching fellow at South Boston's Patrick F. Gavin Middle School. "It's not easy for youth to access a way to fight those things."

Part of that inability, Conroy says, comes from changes in the urban public-school system. Shootings in schools have caused administrators to limit students' freedoms. As a result, young people can't go beyond the accepted norms, as students in the '60s did with on-campus sit-ins.

"There's a certain kind of behavioral training that goes on that's very different from suburban public schools and private schools in general," says Conroy, who last summer began the Boston Youth Hip Hop Shop, a program that engages students by teaching them the history of hip-hop. "You have students that are kicked out of class at the first sign of disruption and are sent to an in-school suspension room where they simply copy the same words over and over again. And it is literally the death of education."

Shifts have also occurred within black family structures. People who were active in civil rights remember the informal units of relatives, neighbors, and friends who looked after children when their parents were working. That sense of community gave way to the "me" generation and a materialistic society reflected in some hip-hop lyrics that obsessively focus on cars, jewelry, and designer labels.

"Black kids and black parents said, 'Oh, it's the me generation,' without looking at any analysis of, 'What is going to be the end result of this?' " says Sarah-Ann Shaw, a prominent local civil rights figure who in 1969 became the first female African-American reporter at WBZ-TV (Channel 4).

When Karen Payne, 56, and Scherazade Daruvalla King, 40, compare the stories of how they were raised, it shows the impact of those changes. Payne, who is president of the NAACP's Boston branch , remembers growing up in a 416-unit complex in Hartford; she lived in the only building filled with black residents. "There was always someone watching out for you," says Payne, "so there always was that love."

Daruvalla King experienced that tight-knit community growing up in a rural Texas town. "We lived in a trailer house," says Daruvalla King, founder and executive director of Project: Think Different, an organization launched in 2003 that uses music, film, and online media to get disenfranchised people interested in political and social issues. "We were very poor, but we were rich in family."

Then her upwardly mobile parents moved the family to an all-white neighborhood in the Houston suburbs. "They thought they were doing the right thing," she says, "by taking us away from . . . what they thought wasn't as good a preparation for what kind of life they wanted us to have." Instead, her family became mired in a world of suicide, violence, and substance abuse.

Mel King remembers a speaking engagement he did about 10 years ago at Jamaica Plain's English High School during which a young man asked him, "Don't you know what we're up against?"

"He's talking about some of the teachers in the school on one hand . . . and the ways they were being treated both internally and externally," King says. "He said, 'When are you going to stick up for us?' Before I could even answer he said, 'Oh, you all don't stick up for yourselves, so how can we expect them to stick up for us?' "

King is willing to take responsibility. "It's the older generation's fault," he says. He still bemoans losing the battle two years ago for a bill that would have allowed illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates. To him, it's an example of a time when people of color could have mobilized to address a problem. "I believe that when we allow some of us to get squashed like that we're saying it's OK to squash the rest of us."

Daruvalla King attributes some of the failure to organize to the different ways the generations interact with the community. The older generation relies on television and public-service announcements. The younger one looks to the Internet and cellphones. "Then there's a whole other group of people that aren't tuned into any of that and don't have any desire to mobilize and organize," she says. "So how do you reach them?"

Ernesto "Eroc" Arroyo, son of former Boston city councilor Felix Arroyo and member of the rap duo Foundation Movement, uses lyrics to educate. In one song, Foundation Movement raps about the plight of the upwardly mobile: "We go to these universities and get their degrees, but we're still on the plantation."

With Project: Think Different, Daruvalla King reaches the disenfranchised by helping them realize "I matter, I make a difference, I count." The N-word doesn't appear anywhere on the organization's 2005 hip-hop CD, "Empowerment: The Power to Break You Free," despite the pleas of some artists on the disc. Daruvalla King wanted the positive music to mirror the inspirational songs civil rights activists sang as they fought for desegregation.

"[If] people first believe that what they think, what they feel, really matters," says Daruvalla King, "they can engage in a way that will make a difference not only in their lives but in the community and society at large."