By Alemayu Bemnet, Contributing Writer
Mic Crenshaw does not distinguish between his political life and artistic life. This 16 year veteran of the Portland music scene sees himself playing the role of an educator and an artist in the community. Rarely in music do these two roles converge, especially as overtly as they do in Crenshaw’s music and conversation
Crenshaw says he uses this double consciousness “as a platform to express thoughts and ideas” that he feels are not just his own, but are also “those of people with common experience.” When asked if art is a more direct platform to communicate those experiences, Crenshaw states, “I think art has a lot more flexibility than if I identified as just an educator or just as an activist.” He continues, “I think I’m able to be truer to myself (rather) than trying to live up to a system of thought.”
Crenshaw often speaks to issues of race, white supremacy, economics, anti-oppression, and consciousness in his music. He draws from his experiences as a black man in America and time spent working as a teacher and community organizer. “To me race and class were always interconnected in struggles I face in this country as a black man.”
When asked about his experiences as a black man in Portland, Crenshaw says, “there is my experience as a human being, which transcends race, but because I live in a city that is mostly white, in a country where white supremacy is still the dominant form of public discourse, I’m constantly reminded that I’m a black man.”
Crenshaw has some first hand experience with overt white supremacy. Before moving to Portland, he was active in the Anti-Racist Action, an anti-fascist skinhead movement that originated in Minneapolis (Crenshaw’s home before Portland), and includes a chapter in Portland. After the local murder of Mulugeta Seraw at the hands of white supremacists, Crenshaw and a number of Anti-Racist Action members moved to Portland. They however found that the anti-fascist movements here in Portland “were greatly outnumbered with less support for their movement,” and had found that their work “had already been identified as gang-related by the police,” Crenshaw says.
Crenshaw was also directly involved in a movement called Up and Out of Poverty Now, which evolved into Poor People’s Economic Campaign.
“One of our direct action activities was to take over abandoned houses and buildings,” Crenshaw says. “A lot of the houses were homes where people had been evicted, they were mostly HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) houses.”
Crenshaw says his organizing work, at a young age, gave him an understanding of how the capitalist system marginalizes groups of people. He views the issues of poverty and homelessness through the lens of class struggle. “In a capitalist system there’s always a great mass of people who don’t have their basic needs met.”
In addition to organizing in Minneapolis, Crenshaw taught social studies with a focus on social justice at the alternative high school he graduated from. “The teachers taught me a lot about how to direct a lot of the consciousness in the education. ... It was a process of me learning how to connect my experience to a broader historical movement and context.”
After moving to Portland and starting his music career with the seminal live hip hop band Hungry Mob in 1994, Crenshaw took a a break from teaching in the classroom, and returned two years later when he started working with Portland Public Schools. He worked with middle school students exhibiting behavioral issues. Crenshaw’s social-justice-centered curriculum however took a back seat.
“In that environment there wasn’t a lot of opportunities to teach what I would have liked to have taught because I didn’t have the authority or degree to lead classes,” Crenshaw says.
The job did offer Crenshaw the opportunity to network and work with nonprofits and performing arts high school NW Academy. “I eventually met enough educators in the community who would then bring me into their classrooms and have me teach music and social justice,” sharing “information with them about the historical struggles that created the birth of hip hop music.”
Hip hop as a cultural and musical movement began in the black community and became a defining way of chronicling the black urban experience. Almost three decades later, society at large has the option to listen to hip hop merely as a form of entertainment.
“There aren’t many artists that are as overtly political as I am, and that comes with a certain level of misunderstanding from the entertainment establishment, including the media because what I do combines arts, entertainment, and activism, it’s not just hip hop for the sake of hip hop,” Crenshaw says.
Crenshaw’s audiences are primarily white, which he doesn’t mind as long as they’re open minded about his message. “Where I’m coming from is a place that’s been defined by the black experience,” he says. However, “even though I don’t see a lot of black faces in my audience, I feel what I’m talking about is something we can all relate to.”
In economically trying times as these, Crenshaw makes the connection that “whatever issues we dealt with as people of color were integral to whatever issues we dealt with economically.” In other words, empowering communities of color will benefit all of society.
From his experiences, Crenshaw doesn’t feel that most people in Portland are willing to talk as candidly about race as he is. “When I enter the conversation with my peers, there’s a limited level of attention, in that the black experience is marginalized, and it’s not legitimized, not accepted. It’s almost like it’s an alternate reality as opposed to something accepted on equal ground with what people experience.”
He however believes you have to “choose your battles,” and observes the power “music and being a performer was as a way for me to put my opinions out there and encourage progressive thought and conversation.”
Photo credit Arian Stevens