re Rachel Dolezal, what do African Americans think of white kids who act like black rappers?

[yurbud]

That was one of the first things I thought of when this issue blew up.

Is it complimentary, like a minstrel show, just odd, or what?

[bravenak]

1. I usually laugh inside.

[marym625]

2. Which made me laugh outside

[bravenak]

3. Hee hee!

[Smarmie Doofus]

4. But WHY? n/t

[bravenak]

5. Lol, you know why.

[yurbud]

9. those two wouldn't get any girls

[bravenak]

11. Lol!

[F4lconF16]

6. Lol

I do too. When i laugh out loud, they never quite understand why. No point.

Also, I have a totally unrelated story for you. So I was heading over to my girlfriend's place, and on the way over (if you go the short route) there's a brutally steep hill. I usually gear all the way down, and then go up pretty slowly to keep traction on my rear wheel. Well, anyways, there's a party happening on one of the houses to the side of this hill. Out in front there's a large group of people a black guy with his arms waving about, all in rather spirited debate about something.

As I rode up the hill, the guy turns to me and calls out, "Yo, would you call me a nigga?" I called back, "nah man" and kept riding. The black guy said "See, I told you so! Assholes." And then the whole place started yelling at each other and me, and I just kept riding. Whoops

[bravenak]

7. You shoulda dropped the mic on them fools.

That is so funny!

[JI7]

8. i saw one at least in his 30s and looked closer to 40s recently

I dont think it's possible to keep the laugh just inside with that.

[bravenak]

10. I see them all the time up here, it's like a thing.

I remember about seven or eight years back, maybe more, when Paul Wall got a bit of fame... Every White Boy in Anchorage seemed like, had a stupid ass grill in their mouth, blue rhinestones, white, yellow, pink! It was super dumb. They even opened up a little kiosk in the mall selling those shits. I laughed and laughed. I clowned everybody with a fake grill.

[yurbud]

12. I wonder if they'll keep it up into the rest home

[JustAnotherGen]

13. Act like? Silly

Do? Cool!



This is the son of one of my girlfriend's from high school:

http://terryjamz.com/

Terry is a case of his mama and daddy raised him right! Neither of those kids as an ounce of prejudice in them - and even as a really little guy? He loved the music.

[tishaLA]

14. There's a really good book about minstrel culture

I'd need to read it again to convey its thesis adequately, but the upshot is this: that minstrel culture is often demonized, but that racial identity is always-already a kind of minstrel show--that minstrel shows just lay bare, and often render offensive, the underlying truth of the performative nature of raced identities in the US. (The book is called Raising Cain: Blackface from JIm Crow to Hip Hop or something,, if I remember correctly.) So while people like Spike Lee reasonably critique the minstrel aspects of African Americans in popular culture (i.e., Bamboozled, his critiques of Tyler Perry), the author of Raising Cain would respond, yes, but it's also true that "blackness," like "whiteness," is inherently unstable and we culturally perform identities--as if a kind of regulated, socially legible minstrel show--that we police, both internally and externally, for signs of authenticity or inauthenticity.

It reminds me of a previous article I used to teach that dealt with this question from the perspective of gender, "The Gangsta and the Diva" by Andrew Ross. In that essay, Ross looks at Treach from Naughty by Nature and RuPaul and argues, convincingly, I think, that the represent two modes of creating a kind of armor around the black male body. But this doesn't really touch on the question of racial appropriation, so....

[JustAnotherGen]

15. Thanks for this post

Very interesting - checking iTunes and Amazon for those books!

[yurbud]

17. What's Spike Lee's critique of Tyler Perry? That he only shows middle to upper middle class blacks?

[tishaLA]

18. He calls it "coonery buffoonery"

Says it's lazy, basically, and plays into stereotypes rather than creating an expansive version of blackness.

[yurbud]

19. I didn't know black people didn't go to Rosewood. I saw it

after the end of the Cold War, some of those extreme cases of racial violence, like a similar incident in Tulsa, got some play in the media, probably for the first time since they originally occurred.

Before that, the only "race riots" we'd hear about were Watts and others where black people were rioting, rather than being the target of violence.

That's the part of the black experience that a lot of white people can't seem to appreciate: even after slavery, black people could be killed with impunity, even wiping out whole communities at a time.

Now only the police (and George Zimmerman) can get away with it.

[Number23]

16. This or something similar usually happens

[BainsBane]

20. I used to see a lot of guys like that when I played poker

and they were constantly calling each other n...s. They were hanging out with black guys that didn't tell them to fuck off, but who knows what they really thought.

The only thing I ever said about is was that I was raised to never use that word, and I just didn't get it.

(white woman here, in case anyone can't tell).

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

21. They're mocking and making fun of them/playing up stereotypes about black people.

In my view, racist as hell.