The Zoot Movement

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Throughout the course of history, some of the most effective ways in which individuals rebelled began with small, non-violent movements. Some rebellions that were not as publicized, such as the Zoot movement in the 1940s and hip hop in the 1980s, gave racial and ethnic minorities a way to express themselves in a world set to subdue them. As examined in Tricia Rose’s “A Style Nobody Can Deal With” and Luis Alvarez’s The Power of Zoot, youth revolutions such as the rise of Hip Hop culture and the zoot suit movement relied on youths’ expressions of themselves rather than outright inequalities. In “A Style Nobody Can Deal With,” Tricia Rose comments on the beginnings of hip hop and the influences it had and created. As she states, “hip hop …show more content…
77). Hip hop gave an alternative identity to youth in those communities affected by new infrastructure and those communities that lost their “older local support institutions” (Rose, 1994, p. 78). The artists’ identities were then up to each individual and their names would “speak to their role, personal characteristics” or other aspects of themselves to become their hip hop identity (Rose, 1994, p. 80). The Hip Hop artists’ identities and expressions of themselves allowed them to go against the mainstream culture as a form of rebellion against it. The Zoot movement in the 1940s also demonstrated a form of rebellion against popular …show more content…
As Alvarez states in the first pages of chapter 3 of The Power of Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance During World War II, youths of color “employed their own bodies and each other as resources to create a multiracial cultural space… and challenge their own subordination” (Alvarez, 2008, p. 78). Zoot culture allowed nonwhite youths to express themselves in a way that showed their irritation with the popular culture in the United States. Japanese youths specifically had good reason to go against the culture due to the crimes of internment camps and the loyalty questionnaires. Further, zoot culture gave dignity and identity to those involved, similar to hip hop in the 1980s. Yet, the identities associated with each culture differed
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