“Where Is The Love?”
By: The Black Eyed Peas
Why this song?: This song raises questions about inequality and structural racism. The song repeatedly used the term “love”, which many students hear all the time in school and at home. The Black Eyed Peas are able to implore people to question why the world is not filled with love. Children are often taught to love one another, but an important lesson to learn is that not everyone has always treated everyone with love. This song unpacks why there has not always been love, and that to have real love, secrets of the past cannot be swept under the rug.
How would you implement it in the classroom?: This song would work well in an elementary school classroom. I would start off by asking the students what love meant to them. I might give them a heart cutout, and ask them to draw what love meant to them. After that, I would group students up and give them the lyrics to the song. I would ask them to point out where the word love came up, and if it made them think differently about what love meant. Next, I would have students share what they thought about the song and their findings. I would have everyone come together and would go over parts they may not have understood. One part that I would really hone in on is where the song says “New days are strange, is the world insane? If love and peace are so strong, Why are there pieces of love that don’t belong?” I would ask students questions like, if someone is hurt, is loving them enough? What can we do outside of loving someone who is hurt? I would hope by listening to this song, students could understand that if someone is being oppressed, that loving them is only one step and that you must understand why they weren’t loved and tap into that as well. I would hope that this lesson and the importance of “love” could open up the doors to understanding ideas like systemic racism, and its deep-rooted nature.
Two scholars this lesson relates to:
- This lesson relates to some of the tenants of a good lesson plan that Stovall discusses in engaging with students through hip-hop. I believe that this lesson matches with one of Stovall’s tenants very strongly. Tenant (E) says “teachers and students engage in a collective struggle against the status quo” (Stovall, 2006). I believe that challenging what love in society means, and how people have not been loved unjustly, is really referring to systemic racism, and the color-blind attitude that people tend to have. Analyzing this song further helps to push past the status quo of being color-blind.
- I believe this lesson plan also refers to Gloria Ladson-Billings and her notion of society. Billings says that we live in a capitalist, patriarchal, and white supremacist society and that in order to engage in critical race theory, we must acknowledge that racism is endemic (Ladson-Billings, 1998). That being said, acknowledging that people haven’t been treated fairly and why, is a step in understanding broader themes of critical race theory, through this song.
Work Cited
Ladson-Billings, G. (1998). Just What is Critical Race theory and What’s It Doing in a Nice Field Like Education? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11(1), 7–24.
Stovall, D. (2006). WE CAN RELATE. Hip-Hop Culture, Critical Pedagogy, and the Secondary Classroom. Urban Education , 41(6), 585–602.
Contributor: Hallie Bachman