In conjunction with Professor Mari Crabtree’s First-Year Seminar, “When Bruce Lee Meets Bruce Leroy: Afro-Asian Political and Cultural (Dis)Connections,” the African American Studies Program has invited Dexter Thomas to deliver a lecture titled “‘Niggers and Japs’: The Logic of Japanese Hip-Hop Nationalism.” Thomas is a journalist with VICE News who has previously worked at the Los Angeles Times, and he is also a PhD Candidate in Asian Studies at Cornell University. His research examines Japanese hip-hop, most especially in the 1990s, and his lecture will focus on the right-wing Japanese nationalist rhetoric in the work of some Japanese hip-hop artists. He will explore how the infusion of Japanese nationalism into this music is largely the result of a problematic distortion of the black nationalist themes and imagery used by African American hip-hop artists like Public Enemy. The lecture will be held on Tuesday, March 14, 2017 at 6:00 pm in Robert Scott Small 252.

This lecture was made possible by the generous support of the Asian Studies Program, International Studies Program, First-Year Experience Program, and Music Department.