How hip hop helped a whiteboy out of the bathroom

This thesis suggests the transformational possibilities of hip hop through autoethnographic performances, countering analyses of hip hop discourse that racialize and problematize both the discourse and its artists. Here I present and interrogate auto-ethnographic texts/performances to address how engagements with hip hop may awaken a critical consciousness that can help white boys out of the margins to which some are relegated. Through hip hop white boys may perform identity constructions that unpack the relative class and race privilege of white men. Such performances may highlight contradictions and ironies of race and class, but may leave masculinity unexplored and re-center whiteness. At the same time, a critical but masculinist discourse may redeem white males whose class standing or gender marginalizes them and provide them with a masculinist community and mentorship they crave. Hip hop, created in marginal spaces, has the potential to at least partially reveal the social constraints and practices that generate marginalization. KEY WORDS: discursive, autoethnography, hip hop, race, masculinity, identity, whiteness