This qualitative case study sought to describe and interpret how African American students use the cultural capital of hip hop to engage in learning activities in a secondary classroom. Colonial education is explicated as the strategic purpose of educating students from African American communities. Through understanding colonial education we can see that Western cultural hegemony is at the heart of public education. Afrocentric and Critical frameworks were used to apply Africana Critical Theory, Critical Hip-Hop Pedagogy, and Critical Pan-Ethnic Studies to critique cultural capital, student engagement, and cultural mismatch/cultural incongruity. Three students, who stated that hip hop is at the core of their identity, were observed in a core subject class at Inland High School in Spring 2009. They also supplied data through interviews and journals. Two focus group interviews were conducted, one with students who self-identified with hip hop, the other with students who did not self-identify with hip hop. The focus groups were a source of validation of the data obtained from the three primary subjects.

The themes and sub-themes that emerged from the data are: (a) assertiveness/agency, with sub-themes of defiant-demeanor and swagger; (b) voice, with sub-themes of self-empowered space and personal responsibility; and (c) essential interactions, with a sub-theme of congealing praxis. The subthemes reveal key areas where the students expressed and emphasized proactive agency. The students used their empowered spaces to develop ideas and devise strategies to proactively decide for themselves why and how to interact with the protocols of the classroom.

The process whereby hip-hop culture equipped and empowered the students occurs in the community of practice, outside of the school, in the community. The process displays the essential importance of habitus, scheme, and elaborate and restrictive codes within the community of practice. Elaborate and restrictive codes developed in the community of practice were then used to interpret intertextual events in the classroom. When the students were asked to compromise their identity and acquiesce to the assimilationist expectations of the school, the students developed schemes to resist these expectations, while still engaging the learning activities on their own terms.