PENCIL NOTES
This article is part of a series of socio-political commentary, titled “Pencil Notes”. The column will appear in the News section on the first day of its posting, and then move to the Opinion section the following day.
By Tenzin Wangyal
Why do young Tibetans dress up in hip-hop attire, and try to talk and act like gangsta rappers? Are these young Tibetans keepin’ it real or are they just wannabes? Do they have any street credibility? Are there any wider implications about this trend that we need to be concerned about? Though I am not an expert and certainly don’t have any insider information, let me throw in my “50 Cent”.
This seems to be the preferred dress code for most young Tibetans living in the US, Canada, even Europe and increasingly in India and Nepal: a loose baggy jeans hanging precariously below the waistline; an oversize t-shirt; a baseball cap worn backward or sideways; and, a pair of boots or sneakers at least 2 sizes bigger. Add the defiant swagger, some hand-signs and some expressions like Nawmsayin’? (Translation: you know what I’m saying?), and lo and behold, we have ourselves a Tibetan wannabe nigga, in short a tigga. No one should take offense at this epithet because I have seen the same young Tibetans refer to themselves by that name and regularly greet each other with a “Wassup, nigga?”
Before putting the fashion choice of our tigga brethren under the microscope, I will acknowledge that our youngsters are probably drawn to hip-hop fashion for the same reasons that millions of other young people throughout the world emulate this nonconformist, casual and rebellious counter-culture. There is also the inescapable presence hip-hop music has come to have in pop music and culture. On top of that, most Tibetans in the U.S. live in neighborhoods and send their kids to public schools where hip-hop clothing is the norm. The teenage urge to fit in with one’s peers, the fear of being picked on or bullied or worse, ostracized for being ‘un-cool’, the realization that they might not be able to assimilate into mainstream white America, the insecurity and confusion of an adolescent searching for one’s identity – all conspire to lure young Tibetans to join the Brotherhood of the Bling.
I am a big fan of Old School Hip-hop, which reflected the true spirit of hip-hop and was about empowerment, flipping the script and taking responsibility for one’s future. However, in the recent years, Old School Hip-hop has been replaced by Gangsta Rap, which has been influenced by the dress and life styles of thugs and prison mates. For instance, wearing loose pants had its origins in prisons where belts are among the first things confiscated when new inmates are being given their uniforms. Unlike Old School Hip-hop which carried social messages and was more about ‘sticking it to the man’, gangsta rappers are no more than unscrupulous businessmen simply catering to what sells – sex, violence, misogynistic themes, and the pimp and playa stuff – elevating the scum of society to the status of cultural heroes and promoting vices as virtues. This has caused many black folks including intellectuals to worry about the direction in which hip-hop culture is now headed, and the image it is projecting of the larger African-American community.
Now just dressing up like a gangsta rapper in and by itself poses no serious threat. But we all know that wearing a certain uniform or dress code is like a soft command that makes you adapt your personality, including your language and mannerisms so that it fits with the image you are seeking to project by your choice of clothing. In other words, what you wear requires you to carry yourself accordingly. So if a young Tibetan feels that to convincingly pull off gangsta rap fashion he should talk and act like a gangsta, then there is a problem. After all, their gangsta rap icons flaunt their criminal past as testament to their own perverse definition of street credibility, most of their songs extol gang violence and going to prison is seen as a necessary rite of passage. And from my own personal observation, its seems that Tibetan kids are just not wearing gangsta rap hip-hop fashion as a fashion statement but rather taking it seriously and trying to emulate the gangsta lifestyle, and perhaps harking back to our pre-Buddhist ‘warrior race’ history. The lack of parental guidance and attention though not the main cause of this problem, certainly plays a huge part in allowing these sheep to stray far away, and sometimes beyond recall. In many cities in the U.S., Tibetan parents work more than two jobs or at least overtime in their one job but when it comes to something more important, that is parenting, they work only part-time and literally let (the rest of) the village raise the child.
I am worried by this trend of young Tibetans trying to be all hip-hop and gangsta because in trying to do so they are unknowingly committing intellectual suicide by aspiring downward. For example, unlearning Standard English and taking up Ebonics or Black English (which is a hybrid of English that was spoken by uneducated white slave owners and the grammar of African languages) cannot work wonders to ensure upward mobility at work or life in general. This could partly explain why Tibetan girls – who unlike their male counterparts are not that much into hip-hop and prefer to rather assimilate into the more conservative mainstream – are now faring much better than the guys these days in academics and consequently, ending up with better careers. However, I think we Tibetans do not suffer from a lack of collective identity – in fact there are reasons aplenty to be proud just being a Tibetan, enough that I would not be embarrassed to even literally shout it from the mountaintop. We certainly don’t have to scramble to fit in and assimilate either with the mainstream or with the counter-culture. The better alternative would be to acculturate, which would allow us to acquire the ability to function within the dominant culture while retaining our Tibetan culture and Tibetan-ness.
I can only sympathize with the young Tibetans who dress and act all hip-hop because I think as much as they are in denial, they find themselves in a very uncomfortable position – stuck in the middle with both sides resenting them: the older Tibetans disapprove of these ra-ma-lugs (neither goat nor sheep) for rejecting our own identity, and the blacks resent these wannabes for “trying too hard” to copy them. After all, no matter how you look at it, they “ain’t keepin’ it real”.
Tenzin Wangyal is an alumnus of TCV School, Dharamsala, and Middlebury College, Vermont. He currently works in Boston, USA and is on the Board of Directors for Students for a Free Tibet (SFT). He can be reached at tenzin_wangyal@hotmail.com
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