Description: I will be presenting at the 54th annual conferences of the Association of Black Sociologists. This year’s theme is Black Resistance” Reimagining 60 years of Civil Rights and 10 years of Post-Ferguson Fights. I am on a panel centering issues of children, youth and young adults. My presentation centers around how “Pac Babies”; Black youth born after Tupac’s death have adopted his persona and ideology to inform their entry into the Post Racial, Social media era of the Black Freedom Struggle. I offer that, by providing T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E. as an alternative to the politics of respectability of the Civil Rights Movement and being resurrected as a mythical superhero battling police violence, Tupac influenced both the street protests and social media engagement during the protest phase of Black Lives Matter

Featured Panelists

-m.A.A.d City: Carcerality of Black Girls in the Afterlives of Slavery in Schools - Pharren Miller, University of California - Los Angeles

-Facing Black Precarity in the Youthwork Paradox: Unveiling the Interiority of Black Youth Workers’ Lives - Bianca J. Baldridge, Harvard University

-(Dis)Engaging the Black Church: A Qualitative Study on the involvement of Black Young Adults in Church - Ali Mumbach, Howard University

-THUGLIFE and BLACK LIVES MATTER: Tupac as a Symbol of Rebellion for the Trayvon Martin Generation Dr. Charity Clay

Abstract:

The late Bay Area Hip Hop legend Shot G stated that Tupac Shakur “rhymed from the pit of his stomach” asserting that Tupac’s greatness was in the potency and relevance of his message more than the technical skill of his lyricism. Tattooed across the stomach that Tupac rhymed from was the acronym “T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E.”. Tupac proclaimed that it stood for “The Hate You Give Little Infants Fucks Every One,” a statement that reflected his worldview and echoed sentiments of those like Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin and Huey P. Newton who viewed youth as the centerpiece of the struggle for Black Liberation. Though Tupac was murdered in 1996, his lyrics and interviews resurfaced in the aftermath of the police killing of Oscar Grant in 2009 and introduced a generation born after his death to his thug persona and T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E. ideology as relevant and accessible symbols of Black Rebellion.