Seeking Liberation, Facing Marginalization: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders' Conditional Acceptance in Hip‐Hop Culture

Abstract

Using interview data with Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) hip‐hop participants, we analyze how respondents construct hip‐hop as a liberating space where they can circumvent limiting racial and ethnic stereotypes. However, an intersectional lens reveals the constraints that hip‐hop's hypermasculinity places onAAPImen as well as the ethnosexualized expectations thatAAPIwomen must negotiate. The experience ofAAPImen and women in hip‐hop due to their unique position in racial and gender hierarchies interacts with stereotypical notions ofAAPIpeople in wider society to relegate these participants to the margin rather than center of hip‐hop culture. Thus, we find respondents' constructions of hip‐hop less an indicator of hip‐hop culture's openness than a statement of how constricting the mainstream U.S. culture is forAAPIAmericans, rendering hip‐hop's conditional acceptance preferable by comparison.

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