Washington Pays Tribute to History

A joint concentrator in social studies and anthropology, Kweli E. Washington '97 has applied his passion for material culture to his own body.

A neo-Caesarean haircut, a Scottish Football Association jersey and a silver Mexican sun dangling from his neck pay testament to his concern with physical representations of history.

So does the sunflower tattooed on his right shoulder. "I really like sunflowers," he explains. "They're a tangible piece of the sun, a representation of life."

Washington co-hosts WHRB's Saturday night hip-hop show, a program which has attracted a small but faithful following.

Jon D. Caramanica '97, Washington's neighbor and WHRB co-host, has known him since their second week at Harvard when they interviewed for the same first-year seminar. Since then, Caramanica says, he's enjoyed listening to Washington's "sermons on the air."

According to Caramanica, Washington "incessantly over-intellectualizes the mundane."

"He takes really banal things to extreme levels and tries to inject little aspects of social theory," Caramanica says. "He's larger than life."

Still, Washington stands by his love of material pop culture. His Pforzheimer single is decorated with LP covers, relics from the 1980s including the fathers of hip-hop, the Beastie Boys and Run DMC.

"With CDs becoming so popular, people don't put a lot of effort into their record covers anymore," he says, explaining that record covers are something like artifacts.

As the soundtrack of Spike Lee's "Crooklyn" winds out of the stereo, past two full CD towers containing mostly acid jazz and hip-hop and a low, carved wooden endtable from Africa, Washington eases himself into a chair.

"I fancy myself a cafe-kind of intellectual," says Washington, who also believes in the value of manual labor--admitting he borrows this theory straight from his Social Studies 10 reading on Marx. "Work is a way of regnerating yourself," he says. "There's a lot to be said for being a person who uses your hands to earn your bread."

Sitting in the corner of his room is a rugby ball from South Africa, where he spent last fall to analyze the psychological effect of economic and housing developments on communities.

Washington, a Rhodes applicant, says he went to South Africa because he wanted to take a step back from Harvard and find out about other societies.

And he's incorporating some of the insights he gained overseas into his thesis, which focuses on environmental justice and community organizing in minority-dominated urban communities.

Apart from his radio show and his studies, he spends time with his 9-year-old little brother in the Phillips Brooks House big sibling program.

Washington is also a board member for the Summer Search Foundation, which sends talented high school students from under-represented backgrounds to summer internships. He went through the program while he was in high school in Berkeley, Calif.

While he hopes eventually to found an organization providing psychological support for inner-city residents, Washington plans to go into a more lucrative occupation--like investment banking--immediately after graduation.

But today, Washington says all he wants is the perfect pair of jeans.