I mean, God, I can't fathom how young white people seem to think they're doing anyone any favors by saying they're so "awkard and square" but black people are cool -- all they're doing is switching the same old racist assumptions into some jacked-up compliment. (As if that hasn't been done before: "Black people have rhythm! And soul! Maybe they can come in through the back entrance and tap-dance for us!") All they're doing is reducing the whole notion of blackness to some rap-video caricature, one that still slots black people into a position of powerlessness (Ludacris can be "cool," but are you gonna elect him governor?) -- and, even worse, marginalizes and ignores millions and millions of everday "uncool" non-stereotype-fitting black people.
― nabiscothingy, Monday, 7 November 2005 00:34 (eighteen years ago) link
but also guys, it's "kill whitIE" --
― Nick Sylvester, Monday, 7 November 2005 00:35 (eighteen years ago) link
― nabiscothingy, Monday, 7 November 2005 00:38 (eighteen years ago) link
― sleeve (sleeve), Monday, 7 November 2005 00:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― Bobby Peru (Bobby Peru), Monday, 7 November 2005 01:05 (eighteen years ago) link
Yes indeed.
― moley (moley), Monday, 7 November 2005 02:21 (eighteen years ago) link
― whatever, Monday, 7 November 2005 02:40 (eighteen years ago) link
― Susan Douglas (Susan Douglas), Monday, 7 November 2005 02:46 (eighteen years ago) link
as someone who likes cocorosie's music (am i the only one on this thread?) i enjoy the fact that they engage race at all. my reading of them is that they are not racist, and that most/all of the racial content in their music comes from fascinations with certain eras/ideas (of [re]appropriation). i feel that there is no harm in that, and that there's actually a fair amount of good in it, being that it has managed to provoke this kind of dialog. whether or not she goes to these kill whitey parties is kind of a moot point. every couple of years i might want to hear zztop at a bar or something, does that mean in order to be socially conscious that i should go to a biker bar and hear it in its native clime? or is it ok for me to go down to the hipster bar's cock rock night? i don't think there's anything wrong with feeling more comfortable among one's own peer group. i'm not advocating some kind of policy for social segregation/insularity, but i don't want to go to a biker bar. y'know?
― firstworldman (firstworldman), Monday, 7 November 2005 02:47 (eighteen years ago) link
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 7 November 2005 03:21 (eighteen years ago) link
(Ludacris can be "cool," but are you gonna elect him governor?)
well, he hates bill o'reilly -- that's a pretty good start!
― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 7 November 2005 03:33 (eighteen years ago) link
AND HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS
― DEUTSCHBAG, Monday, 7 November 2005 06:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 7 November 2005 08:18 (eighteen years ago) link
― Soukesian, Monday, 7 November 2005 08:27 (eighteen years ago) link
― sonore (sonore), Monday, 7 November 2005 08:34 (eighteen years ago) link
I am absolutely the last person that would ever argue that we live in a race-less, culture-less world; I've spent ages on other threads arguing exactly the opposite. But it's ridiculous and annoying for anyone to perceive black culture as being primarily about booty-bass, fried chicken, spilled 40s, and whatever else our culture gets from a steady diet of mostly engaging with blackness in the form of rap videos (and not, say, gospel videos). And for the record, apart from just-funny-on-their-own guys like Chapelle or Eugene Levy, I'm not a big fan of "white guy drives like this, black guy drives like this" humor, no matter who it's coming from; mostly it's just tacky and banal, but it also has some of these much-deeper problems up inside it.
And I don't get your last point: you seem to be implying that these people love hip-hop but are just embarrassed to admit it? Why the hell would that be anything other than kinda-stupid? (And for the record, while I'm sure the people at KW parties like hip-hop as much as anyone else, the point of these things isn't exactly earnest appreciation of the music -- it's about a racial-caricature dress-up, which I'm sure is innocently fun in a Halloweeny kinda way, but problematic nevertheless.)
― nabiscothingy, Monday, 7 November 2005 08:49 (eighteen years ago) link
― nabiscothingy, Monday, 7 November 2005 08:57 (eighteen years ago) link
i think it's interesting that a lot of the people who are attracted to the KW parties are gonna have arts degrees and read Fanon while listening to the Shins or whatever... and that they don't realise the problems the discourse of race that they are engaging with. no matter how "ironically" it's treated, these are real distortions - and you'd think they'd pick up on it.
― sean gramophone (Sean M), Monday, 7 November 2005 09:24 (eighteen years ago) link
― nabiscothingy, Monday, 7 November 2005 09:53 (eighteen years ago) link
― whatever, Monday, 7 November 2005 10:08 (eighteen years ago) link
What's funny to me, "whatever," is that the paranoia and neurosis being dealt with here comes largely from the white side of the issue: it's not as if black people, by and large, are gonna have some massive problem with a white person who sincerely tries to get involved in this music! It seems more like white people are just scared over the idea of having to enter a black context, and to have their whiteness suddenly be an issue -- to have it suddenly make them stand out, to be "out of place" in the game of racial expectations, and for there to be the chance that they'll be negatively singled out for it. But hey, congratulations, white people: welcome to being black in America!
Yeah, welcome to being "the black guy" at your office, or a black student at an Ivy League college. And this, right here, is the nasty undercurrent kinda tainting the flipside of what you're saying up above. If these problems of "appropriation" attach to everything, and not just hip-hop, isn't the implication that it's wrong and strange for a black woman to learn classical cello? Isn't the implication that Condoleezza Rice is play-acting a "whiteness" she doesn't belong in? Isn't the implication that white people "belong" in the dominant culture, and black people "belong" strictly in some booty-packed video, and not in the dominant culture around them? You're working on the assumption that the dominant culture of board room and governorships is common and open to everyone -- that there is no culture of whiteness -- and that the only issue is crossing into a culture of "blackness." But as soon as you construct this culture of "blackness," you're acknowledging something outside of it, and in the process doing something unfortunate -- unless you imagine a president who says "what up, g."
― nabiscothingy, Monday, 7 November 2005 16:36 (eighteen years ago) link
― Caught Red Handed at Sam's Hofbrau (Bent Over at the Arclight), Monday, 7 November 2005 16:59 (eighteen years ago) link
http://www.watergate.com/image/liddy3.jpg
x-post
And oh what a pity the world's not whiteOh what a shame i don't have blue eyesGod must have been a color blindIf i made the world it would be all white...
Jesus loves meBut not my wifeNot my nigger friendsOr their nigger livesBut jesus loves meThat's for sure'Cause the bible tells me so ...
― 'Twan (miccio), Monday, 7 November 2005 17:04 (eighteen years ago) link
Ask Charley Pride.
>I mean I feel like a lot of hip-hop, certainly not all of it, but probably most of it deals with inner-city life. Can you really ever claim to appreciate it on the same level of people living in the inner-city if you grew up in the suburbs?
What about rappers from the suburbs like De La Soul, Public Enemy and Ice Cube?
― pdf (Phil Freeman), Monday, 7 November 2005 17:04 (eighteen years ago) link
― firstworldman (firstworldman), Monday, 7 November 2005 17:05 (eighteen years ago) link
― firstworldman (firstworldman), Monday, 7 November 2005 17:11 (eighteen years ago) link
― curmudgeon, Monday, 7 November 2005 17:15 (eighteen years ago) link
nitsuh do you actually know anyone who listens to rap music?
― _, Monday, 7 November 2005 17:19 (eighteen years ago) link
― 'Twan (miccio), Monday, 7 November 2005 17:25 (eighteen years ago) link
― _, Monday, 7 November 2005 17:26 (eighteen years ago) link
(I was actually wanting to add on the way to work something kinda about that -- about how even among hip-hop's black audience, I'd venture that like less than 5% are actually living the lives described in some of the music, and less than 25% are even much brushing up on it. What's weird, though, is that the bulk of the hip-hop white people know is primarily about partying and women and making money, an experience that's in no way limited to blackness or the "inner city." White people get hot in here and take off all their clothes, too.)
― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 7 November 2005 17:28 (eighteen years ago) link
― _, Monday, 7 November 2005 17:31 (eighteen years ago) link
-- nabisco (--...), November 7th, 2005.
TMI dude
Cocorosie violates a sort of corollary, like "don't be retarded unless it works." White girls dropping the n-bomb isn't always a bad thing but the way they do it is soooo clunky it really kills the song which is actually a fairly good song. (More here if you care.)
― Eppy (Eppy), Monday, 7 November 2005 17:33 (eighteen years ago) link
I mean nobody's calling Kanye a wigger or accusing him of "acting black"! That's kinda my point here, that neurotic-about-hip-hop white people make it this huge connection about race, even when they know (check whatever's posts) that it's about a cultural experience or whatever (as described by "real"). And for the record I find it just as annoying when black people construct the same linked notions of "real" and "blackness," cause it does the same vaguely dangerous stuff.
100% right, Ethan, except I think the difference that's messing with people is that if you're like a black kid in Indiana listening to hip-hop you still have some kind of imaginary "in" to identify with the stuff that white people somehow build themselves up into lacking. And in both cases that's just weirdo race-linking stuff, more or less.
― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 7 November 2005 17:35 (eighteen years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 7 November 2005 17:43 (eighteen years ago) link
― _, Monday, 7 November 2005 17:51 (eighteen years ago) link
― die horrible deaths, Monday, 7 November 2005 17:52 (eighteen years ago) link
Meanwhile, three posts in this thread have used the word "retarded" with far less artistic motive.
― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Monday, 7 November 2005 17:52 (eighteen years ago) link
― _, Monday, 7 November 2005 17:53 (eighteen years ago) link
― _, Monday, 7 November 2005 17:54 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eppy (Eppy), Monday, 7 November 2005 18:17 (eighteen years ago) link
― sean gramophone (Sean M), Monday, 7 November 2005 20:01 (eighteen years ago) link
― deej.. (deej..), Monday, 7 November 2005 20:25 (eighteen years ago) link
― whatever, Tuesday, 8 November 2005 02:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― _, Tuesday, 8 November 2005 03:32 (eighteen years ago) link
― Chris Ott (Chris Ott), Tuesday, 8 November 2005 03:43 (eighteen years ago) link
― _, Tuesday, 8 November 2005 03:57 (eighteen years ago) link