By Molly Igoe
News Editor
What do Wu Tang Clan, Staten Island, and environmentalism have to do with each other? Pat Nugent, the new deputy director of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, set out to explain what they have in common on Thursday, Nov. 10 at his talk “History, Hip Hop, and Place: A Talk in 5 Verses.”
Director of the Starr Center Adam Goodheart introduced Nugent, who got his master’s and bachelor’s degrees in English and received his doctorate in American Studies from George Washington University. He has been at Washington College since June, currently teaching a GRW. He will teach an American history class next semester. Goodheart said that Nugent helped create a program called Bike the Big Apple, where he and other guides give tours on bikes throughout New York City.
Nugent divided his talk into five verses to describe his journey and where his research has taken him. The first verse, “How I Came to WC,” described his trip to Mount Saint Helens while he was teaching at Brooklyn College to study the transformation of landfills and other sites with environmental damage. He said that ecosystems are influenced by political beliefs and ideologies.
In verse two, “How I Came to Wu Tang Clan,” Nugent tied the award-winning hip-hop group from Staten Island to environmentalism, and said that they have published more lyrics than a lifetime of Bob Dylan albums. He asked, “What does hip-hop have to do with environmentalism?” He described that environmentalism and the Wu Tang Clan were two pop cultural movements taking place at the same time. Using Staten Island as a case study, Nugent looked at the debate between civil rights activists concerned about fair housing and environmentalists arguing over the Staten Island Planning Act. He then spoke about the rapper, Old Dirty Bastard, and his connection with environmentalism that the Wu Tang Clan utilized to mock environmentalists in their songs.
Verse three, called “Social Diversity/Biodiversity/Ecological Zoning,” surrounded the debate over what Staten Island was going to become in the 1960s and 1970s. Many people wanted to integrate white suburban housing in the borough and make it into a mixed density suburban landscape to increase diversity.
Ultimately, ecological zoning protocols focusing on biodiversity and preserving certain habitats took over the debate, and the idea of socially integrated neighborhoods was pushed aside. As a result, south Staten Island became home to wealthier, white neighborhoods and gated communities.
Verse four, “‘Garbage’ and Staten Island Secession Movement,” discussed the secessionist movement that swept through the wealthier, southern part of Staten Island to break from the rest of New York City. Many of these Staten Islanders were bitter about taking on all the city’s trash, because the island was home to the Fresh Kills Land Fill. The landfill was later closed and served as a symbol for poorer citizens’ underprivileged status and legitimate claims to environmental injustice. Nugent discussed the fact that many secessionists “conflated the flow of garbage with the flow of minorities, where parts of the island were seen as a dumping ground for urban ‘undesirables.’” Today, Staten Island is segregated along an urban/suburban landscape, split by Interstate-278.
Nugent’s last verse, called “Enter the Wu Tang,” was all about the hip-hop group. Founded in 1993, their music, “wasn’t just a reaction to police brutality and poverty, but to environmental politics. The group played with exaggerated griminess and hyper-nastiness to explain the bodies that the secessionists equated with garbage. They embraced the waste that secessionists bemoaned.”
He played one of their songs, which repeated the lyrics “dirty” and “stinking” throughout, and he pointed out the group’s affinity for the grotesque. Almost all of their videos take place in abandoned parking lots, abandoned buildings, sewers, and chemical plants.
“They turned the environmental discussion back to the segregated nature of neighborhoods, and the fact that these poor neighborhoods weren’t just impoverished, but polluted and unhealthy.”
Nugent ended his talk by showing an example of earlier hip-hop, playing Grandmaster Flash’s “Jungle,” and then showing an example of contemporary hip-hop, MIA’s “Borders,” to demonstrate that hip-hop has always undercut environmental concerns. By picking these two songs, “Jungle,” which used the quintessential suburban landscape as a backdrop, and “Borders,” which used the pristine ocean as a setting, he showed that “hip-hop has always been ‘Old Dirty Bastard Environmentalism’ muddying classic pastoral myths.”