“Why am i black?” gendering hip-hop, and translocal solidarities in Dubai

Abstract

What happens when two or more distinctive ways of being, understanding, and living blackness operate side-by-side in the same space and time? What new truths and narratives emerge when distinctive histories of migration and identity converge by the way of extended dialogues between women involved in global hip-hop culture and politics? To answer these questions, I first develop a black feminist ethnographic methodology grounded in a transversal understanding of black feminism and hip-hop politics. Using ethnographic fieldwork, including interviews with eight black-identified “third culture” Afro-Arab women in Dubai, UAE, I argue that hip-hop continues to provide an important point of encounter to negotiate local-to-local connections in ways that undermine the national boundaries erected by states and reinforced through racializing practices that are often expressed through the cultural logics of capitalist heteropatriarchy.