Trevor Peralta
WGS 101
Julie Bacon
20 May 2013
HiiiPower
My zine page shows rapper Kendrick Lamar’s album Section.80 and his HiiiPower movement that he started. The term Section.80 refers to the generation born the 1980’s and the oppressions that they have had to overcome in their lives. The album itself puts more focus on Kendrick’s own social location, being a black “Section.80 baby” born in Compton, California. The HiiiPower movement was started by Kendrick himself in order to try to change the world we live in. The three i’s stand for Heart, Honor, and Respect. He says how it is not “a race thing. I wanted to make it for a bigger goal in mind and that’s to stand above all the bulls***.” He also explains how he’s trying to represent every person trying to escape oppression by standing up for something bigger than his or her own life that may last forever. The main message I tried to get across on my zine page is the fact that while a large part of HiiiPower is about race that is not the main purpose. The first quote “The sky is falling, the wind is calling Stand for something or die in the morning,” from Kendrick Lamar’s song “HiiiPower” explains how if you don’t stand up against your oppressions today, no matter what they may be, they still will be waiting for you in the next morning. Kendrick references people like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. many times and the fact that they took the initiative and stood up for what they knew was right. They were willing to sacrifice their own lives for the better of the world and its going to take that from more and more people if we want to be as oppression-free of a world that we can.
The message is important to me because I feel like I can relate to it in a few ways. When I was growing up I was teased a lot and instead of standing up for myself I would always find a way to hide. It wasn’t until I stood up for myself and said I wasn’t going to take it anymore that the teasing stopped. If I hadn’t stood up for myself the teasing would not have stopped and would probably have gotten worse.
The larger implication of my page is that if people stand up and fight, then the world can become a place free of oppressions. Living with heart, honor, and respect will get us to this place without racism, sexism, or any other type of oppression that holds back our world from being a better place. Also my zine is saying that it does not matter what race you are, or what race you are fighting for, anyone can stand up and fight oppression. Christina Leano talks about how she decided to sign up for a committee in the Philippines because she wanted to actually stand up and learn more about the country so that she can make a difference.
My page is responding to other types of media that oppress individuals. For example, commercials about laundry detergent that only shows females, or sports commercials that only show blacks. All these different types of media are only supporting prejudices about people that hold them back. These stereotypes that we have in the world that we consider to be so bad are only reinforced every single day in our minds due to media like TV, radio, movies, and all the ads and commercials that come along with them. What Judith Lorber said about gender and how oppression is so familiar to us that we do not even realize it can be related to the media also. We do not see that these ads are purposefully creating prejudices. Susan Khan also mentions how people are constantly reminded that they are different, and it is things like the media that do this.