Campbell, Kermit E. “There Goes the Neighborhood: Hip Hop Creepin’ on a Come Up at the U.“ CCC 58.3 (February 2007): 325-344.
Campbell questions a lot of assumptions about race and class in this essay, including Bloom’s assertions about what is middle class (especially critical thinking) and the culture of avoidance that fails to discuss race (330, 332). He discusses Eminem, who he argues “possesses […] a unique vantage point from which to make whiteness, lower- and middle-class whiteness, visible. Such visibility is crucial […] if composition is to equip students with the critical integrity and consciousness they need to be effective thinkers and writers in a democracy“ (330). Concluding that Eminem is a “veritable thorn in the side of white suburbia,“ he lauds the type of critical thinking Eninem does:
Critical thinking of this kind — confidently self-critical and self-reflective — is not, I believe, what we tend to ask of students in freshman composition courses. But if students can’t begin to broach the hard questions about their own racial and social identities, then how can we expect them to think and write critically, in a way that demonstrates command of the responsibilities of citizenship? (341)
