Ride Or Die // A Feminist Manifesto for the Well-Being of Black Women

Ride Or Die // A Feminist Manifesto for the Well-Being of Black Women

Shanita Hubbard • Shanita Hubbard

ISBN-10: 0306874679 · ISBN-13: 978‑0306874680 · 2023

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A feminist manifesto from sociologist and journalist Shanita Hubbard that mixes cultural criticism and pop culture history to dissect how hip hop has sidelined Black women's identity and emotional wellbeing. As a Black feminist who writes extensively about misogynoir and social justice, Shanita Hubbard’s relationship with hip-hop has always been complicated. For Hubbard—and many Black people—hip-hop is a beloved genre of music that offers a voice against injustice, a means to elevate cultural consciousness, and, like all music, a reason to dance. But one day, while listening to the song “One Love” Hubbard became increasingly unsettled as one of her favorite rappers told a story about the injustice of mass incarceration of Black men but did not mention the painful truths of the Black women who often must support them and their children through financial and emotional hardship. In fact it, was the opposite, he reduced them to two categories -unsupported lovers or broken-hearted mothers. Hubbard surmised that in her community—and by extension in hip-hop— there is a hierarchy dictating whose lived experiences takes priority. Ride-Or-Die comes as a fervent disruption to the notion replayed in hip hop that Black women are not worth healthy love and care unless they live up to impossible, male-defined standards of womanhood. Shanita Hubbard is an acclaimed writer, American-based Journalism Instructor at the University of Toronto, chair of the Freelance Taskforce for the National Association of Black Journalists, and a Soros Fellow. Her work has been published in New York Times, Huffington Post, Guardian, Pitchfork, ESSENCE, and a host of other publications. Hubbard’s writing has helped foster complex discourse around intracommunity sexual violence, abuse within the hip-hop community, and the complicated relationship between Black women and hip-hop.

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