Da Rules is a spoken word poem written and performed by Marvin Hodges,

Em Allison, and Saidu Tejan-Thomas at VCUs fifteenth annual College Unions

Poetry Slam Invitational on March 25-28 in 2015. They are all members of Good
Clear Sound a poetry slam team at Virginia Commonwealth University. Their spoken
word poem centers around the hidden curriculum in society for the African-American
community. These three individuals are all of African-American decent and it is
obvious many of these rules are ones that they have experienced themselves. Some
of the rules are that African-Americans are to be nice and accommodating but are not to
be over confident especially around someone who is not of color. It also touches
slightly on police brutality in the aspect of what you are to do when approached by a
police officer. The logic of what they say to do makes you think, because its very
contradicting and may cause you to appear to be resisting arrest when in reality you are
trying to avoid an altercation. The information is taken from other police brutality
cases, and they are things that you would think why can I not or should not be able to
do these things, but they say not to do them because those were the direct reasons for a
lot of those cases. They even mention stories of police officers fabricating the reason
that people were shot, an example of this is; F: Why are you shooting yourself? M2:
Why are you shooting yourself? ALL: Why are you people always shooting
yourselves? M2: In the chest, while handcuffed.. They also speak on appearances that
African-Americans should uphold. Like, wearing bright colors vs. dark colors or
keeping their hair tamed and not natural. There are even things mentioned that cannot
be changed like, having a thinner nose, narrower hips, thinner lips, or lighter skin. The

poem basically points out that the standards society has for the African-American
community is not feasible or fair.
This video has all of the sociological paradigms/perspectives represented in it,
but the most represented would have to be the interactionalist paradigm/perspective.
The interactionalist paradigm/perspective is defined as; an approach that generalizes
about everyday forms of social interaction in order to explain society as a whole. These
individuals generalize that every social interaction that an African-American will have
with a police officer will be the same, which is not necessarily true. Some may have
good interactions and some may have bad ones that can be better or worse than the
ones insinuated in this spoken word poem. I feel Emile Durkheim would see the
information given in this spoken word poem as a problem because he believed in social
order and this doesnt scream equality.