Like any parents, White, Black, movie stars, athletes and Hip-Hop parents have and will experience having children with disabilities and as a Black disabled man who loves music and entertainment and is the c-founder of an international network of Hip-Hop artists and other musicians with disabilities, called Krip-Hop Nation the question is what do you wand for your disabled child charity or activism?
The whole entertainment industry from Hollywood to Hip-Hop labels and artists have a long history of choosing charity over activism when it comes to the disabled community or an I story thus not seeing the we and activism in disability. Knowing that Hip-Hop was a movement started in a Black and Brown community in New York that grew into a multi billion dollar industry and the disability movement started with middle class White parents so of course both movements has totally different roots that in the beginning were on two different streets but still today I think both movements never had a chance to coming together to learn from each other.
However Hip-Hop learned an aspect that covered the early views of people with disabilities that came from the church, medical arena and other top professional workers and that was charity. Charity comes from the Latin noun ‘caritas’, which is derived from the adjective ‘carus’ meaning ‘dear’. It originally meant ‘Christian love of your fellow human beings’ and only started to be applied to organizations that help others in the late 18th century. At the end of the 19th century, charities started taking a more systematic approach to the work of improving social conditions, and adopted management methods that were gaining a following in the business world. Modern grantmaking was founded on the large-scale donations of a number of individuals and families who made their wealth during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the steel, oil, railroad, telegraph, and automobile industries (such as Sage, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford).
Activists and others in the disabled community knows that there are different models to view disability and many of us know that the charity model of disability is one of the oldest and out of date model to view people with disabilities as follows:
People with disabilities are often treated as objects of charity and pity. The charity model is an older and outdated model of disability. The Charity Model requires that those with more resource should help those without. What it looks like: People in your community assume you will always need help and pity you. You are considered a burden requiring charitable resources for support. Many of the original foundations of benevolence and charity have their beginnings in religious institutions and the relationship between people with disabilities and the church has a mix-bag on one hand the church saw people with disabilities as a group in need, to be heal and to be “taking care of with no voice or self empowerment….
As we know early Black Americans were force to adopt Christianity and with that charity thinking and practice in now deep in the Black community especially when it comes to disability. Because of this history, Hip-Hop have been touched deeply with charity until it hits home aka when Hip-Hop artists becomes parents of disabled children as we have seen with my artists, on December 18th/2021 rapper, Fat Joe came out on a video to talk about his son who has Down Syndrome. Recently we are seeing many Hip-Hop artists finally coming out to talk about their children/child with disabilities but is that enough in 2022? Where are they getting their disability education and who/how are their views changing from charity to activism?
I argue there is a cycle of feels that parents go through when they find out that their newborn has a disability first is why me, then pity, then self advocacy but Krip-Hop Nation want to help these parents to view disability aka their children as part of a we that has political, historical, artistic roots and identity that have their ancestors contributed to the birth of the entertainment from negative to positive like freak shows to medicine shows to minstrel shows, to the circus to field songs to the Blues to Hip-Hop and beyond. For that to happen Hip-Hop movement and the industry must come together with the Black/Brown lead Disability Justice and Krip-Hop movements to begin this type of thinking that can wash away some of charity thinking and practice that engulf the Hip-Hop culture and industry. Every parent wants a better world for their child and this growth is in the right avenue for a better world for their disabled children!
