I happen to disagree, as countervail seems to think being rich and black, acting in films that are “white” means you can’t comment on black culture. Just because Rihanna is from a middle class family means she’s all of a sudden not fit to comment on and engage with black culture? Really? Essentially, countervail is saying race doesn’t matter, no matter what black people say about it.
I read a bit of this into their comments, but I also thought of it as pointing out the relativism of cultural cross-pollination that many critics appear to largely ignore. For instance, from a perspective of Yoruba emigrants in Brazil, I could easily see US African American culture as appearing rather whitewashed. That in the US, people “appropriating” from US black culture are dealing with a subculture which is largely a co-optation to begin with. This does not make it less awkward, nor diminish their right to their own culture. But I am not convinced that the case is there to claim that there is a as distinct a racial or ethnic identity involved as some might suppose. To an extent, this is a subculture which wants to have it both ways, to be assimilated and maintain a distinct identity. I can empathize, but… good luck with that!
Another example of oblivious relativism I encounter is when USians get some idea of my involvement in Yoga and Tantrism. Not that I broadcast this, but it eventually comes up in work, family, etc. I encounter the odd disrespectful remarks from Christians about me being involved in “foreign” religion. Apparently completely oblivious to the fact their discipline of choice is itself a transplant from the Levant. My school of thought might be 7000 miles away on a different continent, but theirs is 5000 miles away, also on a different continent - so the criticism is pretty hard to acknowledge as having any validity. Yet people complain that I am involved with something which is not of “my own” culture, whatever that is supposed to be.
So, how do people decide what ideas or practices they can use? If eating Chinese food for lunch is ok, why not wearing Chinese clothes to a job interview? If I watch a movie from Sweden or India, what obligation do I have to qualify it as “other”? How does one balance the tightrope walk of being cosmopolitan while maintaining artificial and arbitrary levels of separation? As a person in their 40s, I have always felt that I have lived in a truly global community. It seems much more real and obvious to me than the more provincial attitudes of nationality, race, and economics. I think that cultural overlap is a natural consequence of multiculturalism. But it probably seems annoying or alarming to those who haven’t grown up with it.
This may not related to the article at hand, but this is the best description of what’s wrong with the current Social Justice Movement when it comes to Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and other Social Media; Radicalization and Ignorance (this can be said about anything really).
I agree with you that ignorance is always a problem. But I don’t agree that there is any reason to assume that “radical” should automatically equate to “wrong”.
sorry, By Radicalization, I meant Paranoia and Overreaction.
Isn’t one persons “paranoia” another persons “justified reaction”? Who gets to decide what is paranoia and what is an overreaction? Radicalism has been consistently deemed outside the realm of civil discourse, but is it? And charges of radicalism are often politically motivated, yeah?
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That’s basically what I was getting at. Any rhetoric or action which works against the status quo could easily be described as “radical”, regardless of to what extent it may or not be reactionary.
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Only if you cut off my quote where I say “such adversity infers no exclusivity” and that’s the point of contention many people have.
man, you started OUT well with that. There IS a degree of appropriation of poor minority culture by people who aren’t BOTH poor and minority. If you had pointed out that Drake rapping as a middle class, minority in Canada is arguably MORE of a cultural appropriator than Snow, toasting on his hit “Informer” was as a white canadian who grew up in the projects listening to dancehall with his Jamaican friends you would have had an interesting point to broaden the discussion.
Pointing out that disadvantaged groups that are often fertile ground for interesting new art aren’t always race-specific is valid. Look at the appropriation of the punk rock from unemployed white urban youth and maybe even draw some interesting points about how the search for the shiny, new made the appropriation of grunge a generation later take months instead of years.
But then you went and played reverse racism card and made anything else you may have tried to say disappear in the glare of the stupid.
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Not bothered to provide a citation for this, it’s pretty common knowledge, do some research into any of the acts I mentioned if you’re interested (Bambaata in particular made some comment once about YMO ‘inventing hip hop’). Also, I did mention Funkadelic (Clinton) and that obviously brings along within an inbuilt James Brown influence. Herc I’d consider more a contempory really, but yeah he was the one who got the whole thing started.
All I said was that they ‘helped’ and were ‘part’ of the solution, you really love to twist what everyone you disagree with says to paint them as some kind of straw-racist.
It was also due to this particular scene being gay.
It has nothing to do with race, or sexuality.
I claimed they profited off a genre of music which came from the African American community.
But like I’ve already pointed out, that music from the African American community was itself culturally indebted to european musical forms, and there was nothing negative about the appropriation in either situation. The fact that those american musicians profited less than their british followers is of course bad, and something that needs to be recognised (and I don’t see anyone trying to down-play that), but the causes of that are separate from the cultural evolution we’re talking about here (in fact as I’ve pointed out already, that process was more part of the solution than it was part of the problem).
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Let’s stir the pot a bit…
What about cuisine? Just yesterday I was ordering in, and the menu was full of non-white-culture alternatives. Do the cooks profit off other cultures? Should we care and not eat from those? What about the English, would that mean for them to be doomed to native English food? What about home cooking, should we forgo Sichuan cuisine and exotic spices from slavery-endemic areas? Where is the line for overthinking it all?
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I missed that! Sorry. My bad.
And that’s my problem with what you’re saying - the benefits, in this case economic and social, did not accrue equally - that’s a hard point to argue against. One of the first black labels in the US was Black Swan, and they sought to promote specifically classical performers who were black (it was very much a black consciousness and bourgeois operation). Working class blacks, who made up a rather decent percentage of the record buying public for black music in the 20s, wanted city blues and jazz, not opera, so Swan sold both, but the label went under during the depression (lots of labels did).
When African Americans used European music it was seen as a “step up” for them, and whites applauded them for “becoming civilized”. And it’s not like they employed this music, and then some European was screwed out of publishing rights, while the same is not true for whites who played black music. Yes, it was culturally mixed up and created a whole new music. Yes, there was culture sharing on a more equal footing in some cases, especially between artists themselves. But there is this notion, it seems to me, that because Elvis made it making rock and roll that all of a sudden black artists were lifted out of obscurity and somehow profited off their work… well no, that’s just not true. Many of them did not own publishing rights to their music (ETA: and this was intentionally done often), and so, despite Elvis or whoever playing their work, they often got nothing out of that. They were literally screwed out of what should have been owed them for writing these songs that made Elvis rich. This isn’t to say that the cultural sharing doesn’t go both ways or that white artists (like some of the ones you mentioned, Stones, Beatles, etc) weren’t keen to acknowledge or didn’t understand the power dynamics of the music industry - but some didn’t in fact. They saw no need to embrace black artists because they felt that they took their work to a level that blacks just weren’t capable of doing. There are in fact plenty of people who listen to black music and are still deeply racist.
The fact is that rock and roll started as a black genre of music, that was sold and marketed to African Americans first. There was early cross over potential, but what really vaulted rock into its supreme position it still sort of holds in the industry was the fact that white musicians moved in and embraced the genre as much as they did, and it was able to be marketed in a much “safer” way to white teenagers. Rock didn’t emerged as a driving cultural force only because people liked it. Corporations which pressed records and stocked up record shops, and sent singles to radio stations, pushed it in that direction once the indies began to show a profit off it in some markets.
Liking and listening to black music is not the same thing as embracing the cause of racial equality, as she points out in the video.
I really don’t understand how you can say that. These are both historically marginalized groups and as such, they are far easier to exploit. Madonna (in the case we’re talking about) profited and then didn’t really give back to the community whose work she appropriated. I’m having a hard time seeing why you don’t agree that this is problematic? It seems relatively straightforward to me.
It would just be nice if people would recognize exploitation when it happens. I felt the video had very specific examples of this sort of thing and I think she’s on the money. It would also be nice if you could acknowledge the fact that I’m debating you here in a rather straightforward manner, rather than accuse me of just “loving to twist” what every one is saying. If you feel I’m getting some point you’re making wrong, perhaps I’m not doing it purposefully, but because you weren’t clear.
All that being said, I feel you’re twisting my words here to say that all cultural exchange is exploitation and that only blacks can make black music. I don’t not believe or think anything of the kind. The blues, jazz, rock, soul, and hip hop are all a very popular and particular American vernacular of music. Their evolution, as you’ve pointed out, are mixed and complicated and emerged out of a mass media environment that often treats artists in pretty exploitative ways. Many manage to rise above that, make beautiful, enduring works that we all love and that move us. Music can indeed make a dent in the racism of the US and help make connections across color lines.
One more line from that book about the recording industry I’ve been reading this past week. The authors say that (at the time, this was in 77, mind, before hip hop really took off as part of the mainstream industry, so there is something different to say about the situation now, but not too much, I’d argued, as I see black culture still being marginalized to some degree), some 20% of industry product is aimed at a black audience, but they argue that the contribution of African Americans to the music industry (meaning the evolution of pop music) is far greater than what sales show us. They also argue that these contributions are generally still obscured the fact that blacks are generally excluded from major positions within the industry. (from Rock and Roll is here to Pay). The book points out that the industry is just that - a for profit industry, so there is a level of exploitation. but the ability to navigate that system successfully is helped along by being at the top of the social structure in the US. That has changed and gotten better. it’s hard to argue with the success of numerous artists who are black. But that is a rather recent phenomenon in the history of the recording industry. And white artists are still sometimes applauded for things that people bitch about in black artists (or women, for that matter).
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I think the point is not about barring whites from enjoying black culture or from employing ideas from other cultures. It’s more about understanding where they come from, why people do what they do, and respecting that. She is pointing out cases where she feels black culture is being employed in a racist and disrespectful manner. As a young black woman who works in the culture industry, I can’t think of a better person to make that critique. I know you get a little hot under the collar when people who know nothing about Eastern Europe start making broad pronouncements about the history of the region who have little knowledge of the region… rightfully so. There are plenty of stupid stereotypes that circulate about Eastern Europe and the people and culture.
As for your specific example of food and restaurants, I think if you went to a restaurant that served southern cooking, such as collards, corn bread, sweet tea, and fried chicken, and did so without employing racist tropes or whitewashing southern history, it’s fine - southern food is great and along with music, one of our best exports. But if some white dude opened a restaurant that served southern food, and put racist images of black people all over the walls, and had the wait staff all dress as either antebellum people and ignored or embraced the era of slavery, that’s far more problematic.
Cultural sharing is not bad… it’s when someone profits off racism that you get a problem.
Also… I see what you did there!
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Sounds a bit like Paula Deen…
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Yes… or a white lady. Let’s not be sexist and assume that white women can’t be racist, because of course they can be.
Good thing I’m not then. The rest of your reply I mostly agree with, but has nothing to do with what I’m talking about really.
Eh, I do see it as problematic (as I said in my earlier reply to you, this is why it’s not so hard for me to see you as constantly twisting people’s words). I just don’t see everything through a racial and sexual lense, I don’t think every situation need always be analysed in such terms. In this specific case it’s enough that Madonna is successful, has lots of money and not enough creativity. This might make Madonna an asshole, but it doesn’t make her a racist homophobic asshole. There are too numerous examples to list of rich successful artists ripping off unknowns, of all colours and creeds. If you could find lots of examples of unknown artists exploiting other unknown, but also socially underprivileged, artists and then becoming successful, then you might have a point.
I’ve tried to take the time to explain that very thing but boingboing limits my responses as a “new account” to three replies on a topic. Drake is a perfect example as half-Jewish raised in a wealthy Jewish neighborhood, Pharrell Williams is another as a middle-class band nerd who now raps about “gettin’ the dope nigga.”
The point is Miss Stendberg makes her case literally from a point of view of race, that if someone is black, they are entitled to the free expression of culture, dress, and artistic expression typically associated with their race regardless of their background. As well, people of other races should be excluded from that same expression, again regardless of their background. Let’s say it’s not the pejorative “racist” but it is certainly racist. I cannot turn that around in any other way. I can’t say that a black artist shouldn’t be allowed the culture, dress, and artistic expression of traditionally “white” things.
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P.S. This is a perfect example of what I was explaining. We have something groundbreaking, two black opera singers as leads in an opera where it has never been cast like this before. We do not hear a white community explaining how they are “appropriating” white culture. We have an article about what a positive trend it shows in casting with black singers in opera.
Eminen = Appropriating
Eric Owens = Ground breaking
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What’s the difference? People do appropriate culture, and it should be obvious enough to not require explanation. It’s ubiquity is practically built into the use of the word, “appropriate” (adj) is even used as a synonym for “proper”. It is appropriate to appropriate.
This is because of power relations. Historically, African Americans have indeed been excluded from participation in European high culture, while no such restrictions existed for whites playing black music. Though these forms of discrimination are now illegal, they have created a lasting legacy of white over-representation, while whites have historically benefited from the reproduction and sale of black music regardless.
Also, some of the key guys in west coast gangsta rap in the 90s were middle class kids. Class matters a bit less, because there are certain shared experiences all African Americans have in the US. Class has little to do with having black hair and what that means. Being rich doesn’t stop you from getting pulled over and harassed (or shot or beaten, etc) by the cops because you’re black. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t class tensions in the black community historically or that there still isn’t… just that their shared experiences of being black in America creates a shared reality.
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