Michael Forbes: Assistant Professor of English and Black Studies

Michael Kwame Forbes was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. As a young student, he was chosen to be in an honors program where African American students were given certain impressions or “encouraged to think about the black student body in a negative way. There was a set up of an us versus them.” Forbes says it is an ongoing battle to fight the attitudes of the bourgeois when you look at elitist in the black community. He attended Eastern Michigan University and initially wanted to be an Advertising Copywriter. He majored in African American studies and had dynamic professors who convinced that he wanted to do what they did, instead. He noted one professor in particular, Clovis Seems, as being an inspiration, “a man of high integrity, morality and passionate about the field of Black Studies.” Forbes went on to teach at UMass Amherst. He came to DePauw with a post-doctorate fellowship for minority post-doctorates and now resides in Greencastle.
I want to hip-hop over to the topic that attracted me to Forbes’ teaching style. “Being black and born in the mid- 70s, you remember hip-hop and its beginnings. It came out of New York and developed from ‘79 on. Hip-hop was an important part of how I developed my political awareness,” said Forbes. He also claims, “Hip hop was lost to the west.” It was a great moment in ‘94 when he lived in New York and artists like Nas, Biggie and Wu Tang Clan wanted it back. Forbes has seen live performances by De La Soul, Biz Markie, Common, “old school Run DMC and all those guys.” Forbes stopped listening to hip-hop in 1998, although he still listens to old school hip-hop. “You just get older and it doesn’t speak to you as directly as it use to,” said Forbes.
I asked if there were any rappers he likes who have come around since 2000 and he pulled out a thick red book called The Anthology of Rap. His eyes scrolled through some pages and he picked out Eminem, Aesop Rock, Atmosphere, Cee Lo and to some degree Young Jeezy. Ask most students on campus who their favorite hip-hop artist is and I guarantee that Lil Wayne will dominate. I asked Forbes his thought on Weezy and Forbes said he knows Wayne as a young man and, “It is amazing to see him in the present. I know him as a 15 year old secondary rapper in cash money who is under rappers like Bird (Birdman).” If anyone who is a Weezy fan has not seen him in Forbes’ view, I suggest that you YouTube the video “Back That Thang Up” by Juvenile, and catch a glimpse of “little” Lil Wayne towards the end.
I like to ask professors “If” questions; I think they are very telling. If you could bring any speaker to campus, who would you bring? I thought Forbes might name a rapper, but he actually named an economist, Glen Loury, who has interesting and substantive perspective on African Americans in jail. If Forbes weren’t a professor, what would he want to be? An International Correspondent. If he could teach a class about anything of his choice, what would he teach and why? Forbes would have a class about Organized Crime in Film, because “with the story of crime in American film you’re able to deal with so much: ethnic struggles, psychology of man, values. You could do a lot with a class on crime.”