Personal Narrative: The Hyphy Movement

As a Bay Area resident for all my life, chapter 5 from Victor Rios’ Punished resonates with me a lot. I often praise the charter school that I went to because of the academic success I gained from it. However, the ninth grade was a time when I noticed a lot of students of minority ethnic backgrounds struggling with school enforcement. My high school did not have school resource officers (SROs), but there was a dean and vice principal who acted as that authority. This was because it was a small school; the graduating class consisted of one-hundred students. I believe that it was mainly African Americans or Latinos, as these racial backgrounds formed a majority of the school, who were caught up in trying to resist against what they perceived
My older sister went to the same charter school a few years before I went. She figuratively brought the phenomenon back home, which influenced me to “go wild” at school. This was during my middle school years. Her exposure to being hyphy was being the predominant African American and Latino culture that sparked in the mid-2000s. I remember at my middle school, all of my Asian friends would get “hyphy” during school dances. Souljaboy’s “Crank Dat” was the craze back then, and students would break the rules during the dances. They would so-called grind on others. Thinking back to those years, I was quite surprised that it even occurred at a school dance. I would see other students climb up the counter and even the same table as the DJ. Of course, the school officer would disperse the huge crowd to maintain order in the school cafeteria. These ways of acting out, defying order, breaking rules, and being antagonistic were daily incidences: not just during the dance events. In class, these students would get out of control and table-drum loudly. Then others would chime in, and people would start free-styling on the spot. In some ways, this hyphy movement was a subculture because it was a type of culture that went against the dominant culture. It was response to the neglect of the people, which is why they acted “dumb” or “stupid.” It is just
I have had many classes throughout high school on racism and oppression. I had no idea what environmental racism was. It made sense when explained. It was when low-income and minority communities were forced to live in degraded environments. These households would be exposed to toxic waste, pollution, and urban decay. The statistic was that in L.A. county, people were divided by race from ages 0 to 17. 18.4% of Blacks contracted asthma, with Whites at 8.1%, Latinos at 6.4%, and Asian/Pacific Islanders were 6.7%. After everything we have learned in this class, these numbers did not surprise me. It is a harsh reality that Black communities are exposed to poor environments. There was a documentary in class that showed how neighborhood drilling was the main cause of health issues. People were starting to protest against this, which shows forms of resistance. In response to what happened in Aliso Canyon, U.S. cabinet members and celebrities showed up to speak out on this matter. However, the predominantly Black community of Eight Mile, Alabama had a similar crisis: a 500-gallon spill of mercapton that leaked into the soil and groundwater. Unlike Aliso Canyon, Eight Mile did not receive any support from celebrities or U.S. cabinet members. I find this shocking because it suggests that race played a major role in the outcomes of these two