Black athletes have adopted the crossed-arms “Wakanda Forever” salute when they win at something. Serena Williams did it, and indeed athletes have been doing it since the film came out. There’s an article here about it.
I can’t wait for the first time a Mets player does it after hitting a home run.
I guess my only question is: if a white player does it, will he immediately be accused of cultural appropriation? Taking a salute done by a fictional character created by two white Jews?
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Well, did the salute originate with Lee or Kirby? If it’s new to the movie then I’d say it was appropriation. And that’s from someone who has complicated feelings about cultural appropriation.
No, it wouldn’t be cultural appropriation.
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For one thing, that’s largely a bogus concept.
Except Wakanda isn’t a culture. It’s a fictional country and everything having to do with it is made up.
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Dreadlocks aren’t technically “culture” either, but it doesn’t stop the cultural appropriation twits from harassing people about them.
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It’s not about culture with those types. It’s about controlling others and having some form of power over others. Fictional kingdom and culture or not, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the charge made at some point.
Although I cannot speak definitively to the origin of that crossed wrists move, I recall Mr. George Perez used it in Wonder Woman when he restarted the series too.
So… who gets to use it as a sign of success, solidarity, and strength…?
I’ll do you one better. As far as sports goes, it already exists.
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If you follow English Football, you’ve seen West Ham United players do the Hammers and the Irons pose. Sometimes they hold it high. Usually when signaling to fans in the stadium,but for photos or when saluting each other with it the pose is very much what we see in Black Panther.
Indeed. And one further previous use of it comes to my mind as I think about it.
I THINK it was one of Ultraman’s moves, to fire an energy blast. Or perhaps Giant Robot’s… it’s been a dámņëd long time.
TECHNO SAPIENS RIGHTS! TECHNO SAPIENS RIGHTS! 🙂
Ultraman’s move was more of a ‘t’ shape than an ‘x’ shape, and his arms were more to the side of the torso than the center.
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Although, I have seen fans of Sentai shows throw up similar gestures at cons when greeting each other or joking around as at least a few such characters in the, what, thousands at this point, have thrown up a similar gesture on shows. I even remember seeing a show at a con a little while ago where some Power Ranger looking guys who had animal heads drawn on their outfits’ chests had a (red?) leader who threw that gesture up to assemble the team and after combat.
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I’m sure they’ll really appreciate some idiot emboldened by the bûllšhìŧ wagging a finger at them and telling them to stop appropriating black culture because they used something from a movie that didn’t exist in theaters until 2018 but they’ve been throwing that gesture with friends since long before the Black Panther movie was even the first draft of a shooting script.
Haven’t seen BP yet (hopefully while I’m off next week) but from the description it doesn’t sound very different from the gesture made by the Klingons during Wor’f Discommendation. Mr. David? Opinion?
It actually is very similar.
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It’s a very standard, fairly generic gesture. It’s been used in fiction (and thus by fandom) across several countries any number of times before, and it’s already been used by athletes and their fans in multiple sports. Hëll, classic music fans would recognize it from The Wall.
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The only way to know for sure that a person is doing the Wakanda Forever salute is if they say that while making the gesture, but, despite the claims of many pushing the “white people don’t do that” idea, many athletes and others adopting it from Black Panther aren’t actually saying those words when they throw up the gesture.
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This is really an extraordinarily silly bit of nonsense.
OK, having seen (and liked) the film, I’m even more confused about the fuss. The sign didn’t come across as “Hail Wakanda, we’re unbeatable” so much as just a form of respectful salute. No obvious cultural synbology there. Maybe my friend and I saw a different movie?
No, you saw the same movie.
Me and a guy at work do it at each other all the time. He’s black, I’m white and no one has a problem with it.
And that’s MY take on it. “Cultural Appropriation” is a concept that only gets decried and condemned when it’s a celebrity, when it’s highly visible (e.g. on video, on the news, or trending on social media), or when someone specific is on a crusade. No one screams “cultural appropriation” when you tell your neighbor you ate Mexican food last night.
“Cultural Appropriation” doesn’t actually exist. There’s “Cultural Appreciation,” and there’s “Cultural Mocking.” People need to get some perspective.
To be fair, I most often see cultural appropriation mentioned when talking about popular music (especially in the past when black performers didn’t have the same access white performers had, yet white performers often profited from black performers innovations without giving due credit or sharing the wealth) and in the fashion world when designers “borrow” a design pattern developed by specific native American tribes, again, without crediting where the pattern came from, asking permission, or sharing the profit with the originators. I’m not saying every charge of appropriation is justified, but I don’t see the entire term as specious either. Just my two cents.
THANK YOU! I keep telling folks that if they seriously believe that people need to ask permission to celebrate Black Panther, the people they need to be talking to are at their local synagogue.
Louie Farrakhan and his gullible followers hardest hit.
Appropriation would be accused, and it wouldn’t be entirely accurate. But the thing is that this is something currently being celebrated in black culture and considered pretty cool. It’s a black solidarity thing right now. If someone else is doing it, the appropriate question is why? Why right now? Pointing out to black people that this isn’t actually culture doesn’t achieve anything. They’re incorporating into their culture right now to celebrate. Pointing out that the Black Panther was created by, and therefore implying that the character and everything created for the character over the decades is owed to/belongs to/owned by, two non-black people will be perceived as the same old “you people really haven’t created or contributed anything.” I know that’s not what you’re meaning to imply, but even feeling the need to bring it up gives me an uncomfortable shutter.
I imagine you have some contact with some of the black writers who have written for the same companies you have. Maybe it’s worthwhile to have a dialog with them about it and about cultural appropriation? Rather than what unfortunately comes across as a dog whistle on a blog whose reader demographic might not be fully known but is more than likely largely white?
” But the thing is that this is something currently being celebrated in black culture and considered pretty cool. It’s a black solidarity thing right now.” So? As someone has pointed out earlier, it has been used by sports teams and others to highlight their ‘solidarity’. Should they not be the ones complaining about [sports and other] culture appropriation?
Let’s face it, cultures have been borrowing, trading, stealing from each other and using/adapting these cultural items since time immemorial. It’s one of the major ways cultures advance/improve. Whining about it being ‘appropriation’ is not going to make it go away, and neither should it. Unless we all want to wind up stagnating to avoid the risk of offending someone.
So I’m going to start off by blandly stating that others have used the same or similar gestures previously and that there are only so many gestures out there. People are going to use the same gestures for different things. Great wonderful. But what about context?
Cultural appropriation isn’t a thing without context. And the context here involves specific awareness of this “cultural artifact” (which I’m using generally because this discussion could involve other items of a culture, because I feel like there needs to be a discussion of what appropriation is because that’s what the stink is here) and an imbalanced power dynamic. It’s not appropriated simply because someone else wants to use it (like Bruno Mars and funk). It’s appropriated because someone wants to use it without respect for its origins (unlike Bruno Mars and funk). And the fact that people can simply walk in and get away with doing so due to some sort of entitlement. The fact that there’s a conversation here about the fact that maybe white people shouldn’t be doing it already reeks of entitlement. While people who label it as appropriation are asking, “So we can’t even have a gesture?”
You’re right to mention that there is a long history of cultures borrowing, trading, and stealing cultural artifacts from one another. There’s also a long history of cultural borrowing and stealing happening due to one culture’s flexing of its power – with the exchange being forced assimilation. Cultures have also done other terrible things “since time immemorial.” A history of something doesn’t mean it’s something that we need to continue into the future. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my wife to be subordinate to me because she was offered to my family.
The cessation of cultural appropriation doesn’t equate to stagnation. I think not wanting to offend people opens the door for cultural exchange. Because it says that a culture is respected. Rather than calling people whiners and implying there’s something wrong with them for not wanting you to go ahead and do whatever you want.
“I think not wanting to offend people opens the door for cultural exchange. Because it says that a culture is respected.”
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In principle I agree wholeheartedly. The problem is in the details. It’s hard to find something – anything – which won’t be offensive to SOMEONE. Lucy Van Pelt (of PEANUTS fame) once said she’d been careful to consider everything she did or said in case there was any chance it might offend someone and then she stopped when she realized she wasn’t getting anything accomplished. On a more recent note, have you heard of the brouhaha with Canadian Psychology professor Jordan Perterson? He’s gained world-wide acclaim and his books are flying off the shelves because he dares speak plain, unvarnished truths. One relevant aspect is that we, as a society, have gone much too far in condemning ‘effect’ and ignoring ‘intent’. An innocent or well-meaning comment will be condemned because someone took offense at it. Hello? Context? We’re increasingly in a culture of victims where the accuser has priority over the accused – the Ontario Provincial Conservative Party had to hold an emergency Leadership election – just prior to the Provincial General Election – because their then-Leader had to resign due to unprovable allegations – some of which were later proven false and the others are shaky at best – the concept of ‘innocent until proven guilty is out the window. I am NOT saying these are all unjustified, of course not, but the tiniest perceived slight because a cause to rally around. I’d be more concerned if the intent had been to prevent others from using the gesture, or turning it into a source of ridicule. Not seeing this in this instance, any more than when Nimoy ‘borrowed’ a gesture from a Jewish ceremony to use as his now world-famous ‘Vulcan salute’. There are far more serious and immediate race-oriented problems which need addressing fully urgent without coming up with more on the fly. The dream of a world community is not getting any closer as long as we insist on making ‘white’ vs ‘black’, vs ‘Asian’, vs … distinctions instead of treating people as … people. I know, I’m a naive pipe dreamer. But it would be a start.
I’m not sure it would be cultural appropriation if a white player gave the Wakandan salute, but it would be really confusing. The message of the salute, in this context, seems to be, “We are black people who cannot be conquered.” And, yes, a white player could change the meaning to “I, personally, cannot be conquered,” but it would seem to miss the point.
I’m a white jewish guy, and if I did it, it would say “I was a fan before it was cool.”
Arguably not about being a fan of the character. If you were doing the salute before the movie made it catch on, then I’d stand right by your statement. But, and this is a real question because I don’t have access to all of the back issues for evidence, was the salute a thing before the movie?
It’s already happening. Heidi MacDonald warned white people on Facebook not to use the salute because “it’s not for us.” (Which led to a flameworthy discussion, but that’s another topic.)
Sorry, I’m not gonna stop doing it.
I have to argue that cultural appropriation is a thing – but it’s something that we as humanity have been doing since the first hunter danced after a successful hunt, and other tribes copied that. Babylonians copied from Assyrians, Romans copied from the Greeks, Greeks from the Persians and Egypt, Egypt copied from everyone, Persians from China and India – anytime there’s an interaction between tribes, there’s going to be cultural copying.
Is having wallpaper patterns from the Chinese Sui Dynasty cultural appropriation? Yes. Is it a bad thing? No. Is using blackface and a ‘mammy’ accent cultural appropriation? At least partly, and is it a bad thing? Yes, because it’s mocking and denigrating that part of someone else’s culture, rather than saying, ‘this is cool, let’s go with it’.
You may accuse me of splitting hairs here, but I disagree. What you identify as appropriation, I’d call the natural mingling of cultures as people travel for leisure or when actually immigrate to new countries to live.
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It often gets overplayed that America is a melting pot country to the point that it sometimes seems like people are saying this is unique to the American experience, but the fact is that many countries are to greater or lesser degrees as well. When you have people come to a country from many other countries, They bring their culture with them even as they work to assimilate into their new home’s culture. What they bring eventually becomes a part of the culture of their new home. At some point, it has to be acknowledged that it’s not an act of “taking” something from someone else, but rather it’s simply a matter of whatever it is being a part of the culture you grew up in.
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We’re fast approaching the point in time where we can say that Chinese immigrants have been coming to America for two full centuries. Even if we still acknowledge that something is sourced back to a specific cultural group in China from centuries ago (just as we do with various “American” cultural traits that source back to Europe) when we talk about it, at some point it becomes ridiculous to not identify what has become a part of American culture itself as in fact an actual part of American culture.
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Culture is based on a lot of factors, but it’s not based on skin color. When you bring something from what you identify as “your” culture to the main street of another culture and say that it must be acknowledged, accepted, and seen as valid, you ultimately integrate that into the local culture yourself. It’s no longer yours; especially since it never really was yours to begin with. After all, we are all of various cultures, but that is largely by accident of birth rather than choice. We are raised in and taught the culture around us, but we do not own it as if it were property or control it like some form of IP rights.
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In this country, people of all colors and cultures have come here- and done so long after the time of being enslaved and/or forced to come here that the “Cultural Appropriation” screamers love to bring up -and added what they brought with them to the larger mix. At the very least, I’d say 100 years of this is more than enough time to start acknowledging something as an aspect of American (or fill in the blank country) culture as a whole, something accessible to all Americans, and no longer something that is somehow completely foreign to American culture and/or something from outside it.
You’re right that culture isn’t skin color, but you’re also wrong because it has become that for black people. You say it’s been a long time since slavery, but that doesn’t mean the 250 years of slavery in the US that cut black people off from their culture is suddenly null and void. Black people have lost their original cultures, not knowing where they can trace back their ancestry. So, black has become a culture in America. It’s partially in response to the fact that even after slaves were freed they weren’t regarded the same way as white people – they weren’t considered part of the same culture. Locked out of majority culture, black people had to make their own.
So it should be understood why there is some frustration here, locked out of the majority but also told that any culture they create cannot be their own. I don’t think you really appreciate that difficulty. And I see in a comment earlier you talked about people trying to claim cultural appropriation as a way to show some sort of control. I’m sorry, but when you try to compare quibbles about “Why can’t I…” regarding hair and a gesture to the larger “Why can’t I…” situations black people face, it doesn’t quite measure up. Sure, it’s a control thing, but the people claiming misappropriation aren’t the ones who have the real control here. And you’re outright lying if you try to say otherwise.
By the way, the melting pot concept of America is old and outdated. Many have switched to discussing America as a mixed salad. Many ingredients added together to make a meal, but each ingredient remains intact with its own unique flavor. Each ingredient brings its own special thing. I think that’s incredibly accurate.
“… but that doesn’t mean the 250 years of slavery in the US that cut black people off from their culture is suddenly null and void.”
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No it doesn’t. Nor is that the notion I put forward. The reference to the argument put forward by the appropriation screamers is in how they try to almost pretend that that slavery was the only reason any black man or woman came to America in order to make their argument work. The argument they make being that other people didn’t bring their culture here, they were kidnapped and their culture stolen.
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This argument conveniently ignores century-plus that people came to America from every country in the world of their own free will and desire to do so. This ignores the decades upon decades that people have brought their food, music, traditions, stories, fashion, art- their culture -here and incorporated it into their local communities and then the wider regional communities.
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I mean, my god… How pathetic would some things be if people had this attitude decades ago? Ever been to Louisiana? Man, there are parts of Louisiana that are wondrously amazing places to be because of the local culture and traditions, and those are blendings of many things. How boring would those places be if wayback when dimwits walked around telling everyone they weren’t allowed to have/use/do ‘X’ and blend it into their own thing because they were the wrong color or because it was someone else’s culture?
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Screw that.
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I say again- Culture is not IP. It’s not something you own or claim as your property to control. When you bring something to the public square and insist it be accepted as a legitimate part of the wider culture as a whole, it’s no longer “yours” once you’ve done that.
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Plus, well, a lot of times people make these claims about things that don’t go back anywhere near the days of slavery. Look at dreadlocks.
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Dreadlocks are not exclusively African to begin with. I mean, if I wanted to wear them I could legitimately claim them as a part of my heritage. Locked hair was worn by some American Indians, and I’m one quarter American Indian. BUt they were worn by others as well.
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BUt it has gotten to the point where we see people stopped and physically harassed as we saw with the SFSU Campus video that went viral back in 2016. In the words of the women from the video, she got “triggered” to act as she did just from the sight of a white boy with dreads. She was angered because he was wearing an African hair style. But, again, it’s not exclusively African.
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But it shouldn’t even matter if they were or weren’t. When Rastafari- an Abrahamic religion -started becoming a larger movement and reggae (especially Bob Marley) blew up huge, that popularized dreads in America. Suddenly, you had people walking around decked out like full on Rastafari who never practiced it a day in their life. They were just big fans of the music, and no one really cared.
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But over time, aspects of that started migrating into the wider culture. Eventually, you started seeing people who weren’t following Rastafari or a part of the reggae scene taking on bits and pieces of what was seen there for their own art or appearance.
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Frankly, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Frankly, that’s how things should work. Something entered into the culture, it gained popularity over time, it became a part of the wider pop culture, and eventually aspects of it influenced and became a part of other things in the culture.
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It’s always been that way. Hëll, we owe a part of the look we think of as the classic American cowboy to Spanish Muslims. They came, they brought things from their homeland with them, and those things became a part of American culture.
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That’s also how almost every other culture in every country has worked over the centuries. Cultures all over the world have encountered things that were not native to their local culture and, in some cases, taken a liking to what they saw, incorporated what they liked, and adapted it and absorbed it into their culture. Sometimes, as with bagpipes, the thing even becomes so well known with a new culture that most people eventually forget it wasn’t theirs to begin with.
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That’s not a bad thing.
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And, frankly, it’s asinine that we’ve reached a point where screamers can come along and be taken seriously when they promote the idea that things must remain separate and isolated and pretend that arbitrarily appointed owners of culture get to control who can and cannot lay their hands on something. It’s doubly so when we’re talking about something from a fictional culture featured in a movie that’s four weeks old.
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You say that the salad is more accurate than the melting pot. Okay. Guess what? If you put a salad down in front of me, I’m eating the entire salad. If I’m out with friends having a meal and we’re having the pre-main course salad, we’re all probably eating the entire salad. If you or someone else comes along and starts insisting that I can’t eat the onions because I’m white, he can’t eat the carrots because he’s Asian, she can’t have the olives because she’s black, etc… Well, we’re all probably going to tell you to bûggër off and mind your own business.
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So, yeah, I guess the salad is an accurate analogy at that.
“Sure, it’s a control thing, but the people claiming misappropriation aren’t the ones who have the real control here. And you’re outright lying if you try to say otherwise.”
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No, I’m saying there is nothing to control here.
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Absolutely nothing.
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The reason being is there is nothing here that anyone owns.
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Absolutely nothing.
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Some guy in Japan wants to dress up as a John Wayne looking, stereotypical American cowboy and perform on stage? More power to him. I don’t care.
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Some guy in Africa wants to dress up as an English knight for a party and wield Excalibur? More power to him. I don’t care.
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Some guy in Spain wants to dress up as Davy Crockett for an event? More power to him. I don’t care.
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And I don’t care because none of these things are “my” culture. Yeah, they’re a big part of the culture I grew up in, but I don’t own them. And, frankly, no one would be stupid enough to walk up to any of them and say, “Hey, Japanese fellow. You need to go ask those white guys for permission before you even think about dressing up like an old west American cowboy.”
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And anyone who did try to do that would be laughed at by everyone for being the idiot they are.
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Sorry, but it’s just as idiotic the other way round.
Oh Jerry, it seems you try to make it a point to make it difficult to respond to you by putting in little digs along the way about people who discuss cultural appropriation. Just little insults. They’re whiners. They’re idiotic. They’re asinine. Considering the majority of people who talk about misappropriation are people of color, I’m surprised your approach isn’t on the Casually Racist Whites Bingo card (http://i.imgur.com/LQDbLxY.jpg), but you’ve managed to mark a few spaces off nonetheless. And the thing is I’ve checked a few posts back and have found that there are things that we actually agree on things. I’m begrudgingly OK with disagreeing on this one, but you don’t have to be such an áššhølë about it.
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I’d like to address the issue of control of culture for a moment, since that’s one that’s been on my mind for the past couple of years. I disagree that no one can control culture, but only because I’ve seen it happen. Anyone who lives in America has seen it happen. And it shouldn’t be that way. People are actually free to do whatever they dámņ well please, and they often do so in their private lives and personal spheres of influence. But beyond that there is control.
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The rise of Darius Rucker in country music has been fascinating to me, despite the fact that I care little for both Rucker and country music. Two years ago he became the third black musician to perform at the Grand Ole Opry since it opened its doors in 1925, with the last being about 50 years ago (although I may be misremembering the actual year count). This is significant. Now the longstanding belief is that black folks don’t have much interest in country music, so they haven’t been involved in the scene. That’s not true. After all, we all admit that country has its roots in music introduced by black people (amongst many other influences), but it became something of a white institute. One in which black people were specifically locked out of. There has been an interest in participating in the scene, but black people weren’t allowed. It’s clear that this was due to racism. Country music isn’t the only aspect of culture that has been claimed as a whites only affair.
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So how does this relate to appropriation? Because black people in America are constantly forging their own cultural identity. We don’t know our own roots except for the fact that many of us were born and raised in America. Yes, there are black people who come here volitionally from Africa as well as other areas. Great. They have a cultural history that they get to bring with them, and they’re not often fond of our “borrowing” from them either. (There are stories of Africans accusing black people in America of misappropriation. I don’t think they’re wrong, and it’s something that causes a discomforting double-bind for black Americans.) So black people who can only trace their origins back to “we were here” just create their own culture. And we hold onto it pretty jealously for good reason.
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Country music and other institutions claimed to be that of white culture lock black people out. We’re not allowed to be part of it. We can play around with it in our own small groups, but it’s not something we could aspire to be part of. For many of us, we didn’t see that as a possibility until Rucker made it. Yes, this story speaks to representation as well, but that’s very important to have. So we don’t have many things. You say you don’t care if someone partakes in your culture, but you’re one person. In the grand scheme of things, you are irrelevant. Many other people make it difficult to be involved.
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With that, it’s hard to believe there’s a cultural exchange happening when white people “borrow” from black culture. Because it comes across as, “We can have yours, but you can’t have ours.” It’s not tit-for-tat. And in not acknowledging that these cultural lockouts don’t exist and claiming that everything in black culture is up for grabs (do you want your N-word privileges, too?), it shows a certain level of entitlement. The type of entitlement that comes about from an inequal power balance.
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I get that you won’t understand this. You’re supposedly a quarter American Indian, and the rest of you could be whatever. You still subscribe to a mindset that blithely ignores the fact that white culture tends to steamroll everyone else. And let’s make it clear, black people don’t necessarily want to lock white people out of their culture. They just want some acknowledgment for it, rather than it being picked up because black people come up with some cool stuff – but it could be cooler without them in it.
Well, that started weak and went downhill into SJW buzzwords from there, but there are some things to respond to; particularly with your use of Rucker as an example. Oh, and your facts about Rucker are wrong, but more on that in a bit.
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“Just little insults. They’re whiners. They’re idiotic. They’re asinine.”
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Uhm… Maybe because many of them are? Frankly, the Melissa Clicks and Bonita Tindles of the world are probably good examples of the mainstreaming of the stupidity by a lot of that crowd.
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“Considering the majority of people who talk about misappropriation are people of color, I’m surprised your approach isn’t on the Casually Racist Whites Bingo card…”
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Ah, so we’ve hit that point of stupidity. Don’t have something that intelligently rebuts a point? Scream racism! Of course, the fact is, especially on college campuses, online, and even at more than a few fan gatherings, a large percentage (sometimes even the majority of the percentage) of the people doing the screaming and whining are in fact not people of color but rather white people trying to be offended on other people’s behalf or trying to prove how enlightened and “woke” they are.
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Of course, the real fact of the matter is the color of the person’s skin is irrelevant when judging something to be a stupid comment. It doesn’t matter if you’re white, black, red, yellow, green, blue, or winter forest camouflage if you say something stupid because none of that has any impact on what’s said. And, frankly, a lot of the things said by people throwing around the words “cultural appropriation” are just flat out stupid. A lot of the ideas put forward by people throwing around the words “cultural appropriation” are just flat out stupid.
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On a small scale, I’d point to the idiocy of people like Bonita Tindle crying about dreadlocks and claiming in her defense that the sight of a white boy with dreadlocks was such an infuriating act of cultural appropriation that the powerful microaggression of it triggered her into acting like the idiotic áššhølë she likely is even without anything triggering her.
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On a larger scale? There’s an entire convention out there that I won’t pick on by name. It may have started out as a decent idea with a decent goal, but in recent years it’s devolved into SJW heaven. At this convention, they literally have panels where they chastise white writers- some who are even at the con -and inform them that they’re not allowed to use ideas or concepts as templates in their works or speculative fiction if the ideas and concepts are deemed to have originated from something other than “white” culture. Or they can use them but must somehow get permission to do so. If they don’t well, they’re horrible people and guilty of cultural appropriation.
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Likewise, examples of just flat out stupid people would include the types who try to shut down yoga classes because the person organizing them is white and appropriating culture or the ones who try to shut down small start up restaurants because its white owners and cooks (sometimes one in the same) are doing food that’s not deemed “white” food by the idiot screamers. Sorry, but the people promoting those mindsets are just flat out stupid.
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“The rise of Darius Rucker in country music has been fascinating to me… …he became the third black musician to perform at the Grand Ole Opry since it opened its doors in 1925… …longstanding belief is that black folks don’t have much interest in country music, so they haven’t been involved in the scene. That’s not true… … but it became something of a white institute. One in which black people were specifically locked out of.”
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“Country music and other institutions claimed to be that of white culture lock black people out. We’re not allowed to be part of it.”
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Okay, you want to talk honestly about Darius Rucker and situations like this? Fine. Let’s do so. But first, you’re wrong. There have been more black artists to perform at the Grand Ole Opry since it opened its doors in 1925 than just three. I know the Pointer Sisters did. Charlie Pride comes to mind without even thinking about it. DeFord Bailey had a long run of performances in the early years. Rhiannon Giddens, Candi Staton, and Mickey Guyton come to mind because I have friends who are huge fans of theirs and talk about them constantly. In this paragraph alone, that’s seven black artists right there, and I could probably name more if I were actually a country fan.
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Darius Rucker wasn’t even close to only the third black artist to perform there, he was the third black artist to be made an official member of the Grand Ole Opry rather than just a guest artist. There have been just under 500 artist perform there. Of those just under 500 artist, only a little over 60 have been accepted as member artists.
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Puts a slightly different spin on it than your version.
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But, anyhow… Your very long bit about Rucker and country music might make a great point if it was a point allowed to exist in the vacuum of how you want to present it. However, Rucker, country music, and a whole lot else don’t exist in that vacuum. There’s a lot of other stuff around that.
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First, let’s look at basic numbers and averages after a brief digression.
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Now, I’ll freely admit that there existed for a long time in the areas where country music was most popular a strain of racism that would work against blacks being seen as equals. However, while you can point to parts of the country where there was still people strongly believing in segregation, those same parts of the country were very schizophrenic about how blacks were treated in day to day life vs how black entertainers were treated.
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It was not uncommon in those parts of the country for a black entertainer to go to a town where he or she might be horribly harassed while out walking around or refused service at stores, but all the same people who would treat him or her like šhìŧ that day would pack a hotel ballroom to sell out the performance that night; and sometimes in a hotel the performer wasn’t allowed to have a room in due to skin color.
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So, while you can point to areas that may have been a hotbed of racism and discrimination against blacks when it came to day to day life, that didn’t always translate with a 1 to 1 ratio when it came to treatment of black performers. It’s just a fact to keep in mind.
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But, basic numbers and averages…
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During a good stretch of those years you referenced, the percentage of the population that was black was in the range of about 13%. The percentage for whites was somewhere near 70% or more. Just based on population numbers, you’d see a smaller number of blacks performing country music even if nothing else was factored in.
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Now we factor in talent, success, and popularity.
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You used the Grand Ole Opry as your example. Well, the Grand Ole Opry ain’t Jim Bob’s šhìŧ-kicker bar and grill. Just as there are teams that have never played in a Super Bowl, there were a lot of country acts- a lot of white country acts -who never played the Grand Ole Opry. Their list of guest artists and member artists combined is a fraction of the total number of listed bands and singles country artists out there and their membership list is smaller than their guest artist list. Not everyone is going to get there just based on law of averages. Fewer still will be members.
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Now let’s talk about one thing that likely lowered those averages when it came to black artists performing there.
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Do you remember how Darius Rucker started his music career on the national stage? He was the lead singer for Hootie & the Blowfish. Were you old enough then to remember the reactions to Hootie & the Blowfish? Hootie & the Blowfish got a lot of airplay and went over big with many. But there were in fact people who thought it was odd that there was a black guy singing the way he did and odd the music he chose to sing. Most of the time, it was black people saying how weird it was that this guy wanted to sing “white” music.
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He wasn’t the only one.
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In the 80s in the music circles I was at home in, there was a lot of metal. Hëll, I’m a Motörhead fan. When I was around other people who liked my kind of metal, you’d hear a lot of bands. One popular one in a lot of circles was a metal band called Black Death. Look up Night of the Living Death on YouTube.
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Black Death is considered the first heavy metal band with all black members. Do you know who it was out of all the people I knew back then who acted as if that was bizarre or there was something wrong with that more than anyone else I knew? It would be the black people I knew. Why? Because those guys were playing “white” music.
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Have you ever seen a documentary called A Band Called Death? Death was a band that never made it big in their day, but by some really weird twists of fate became a huge thing decades after they called it quits. One thing touched on in the documentary and more so in interviews that are out there is that, while they had a good sized black following, a lot of black people, including at the record labels of the time, did not know how to take them. They were three black brothers from Detroit playing a proto-punk rock and roll style. What they heard from a lot of blacks was that they were playing white boy music.
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I have a friend who plays a mean metal guitar. He’s black. He’ll be the first to tell you that for most of his life, although less so in more recent years, when he’d meet people for the first time and get funny looks and questions of why he’d even want to play that kind of music, it was far more often than not other black people doing that.
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There was almost a peer pressure aspect about it in society, and there were times it got pretty weird and intense. As recently as the 90s, I could turn on talk shows on channels like BET or even mainstream TV shows like The Arsenio Hall Show and see a black host talking to someone like Ice-T in front of a predominantly black audience and see people largely cheered for reinforcing that peer pressure stereotype. I mean, Ice-T literally got cheered by part of some show audiences on appearances for attacking Bryant Gumbel for sounding white while other black guests might get some cheers for comments about how an artist had sold out by making their music sound too white.
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What has all of that got to do with Rucker and the Grand Ole Opry? Well, strong community peer pressure is a bìŧçh. While I will absolutely not disagree with the idea that there were likely institutional things still in place until recent decades that made it harder for some black artists to get to the Grand Ole Opry, another part of that equation is something we can never fully know the answer to. How many potential black country artists never went down that path because they grew up in a community where, as soon as they showed a strong interest in the music, they were ridiculed for betraying their blackness and trying to be white?
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And that has been a very real thing. At this point I have friends in about a dozen states who are public school teachers. Several of them, while things they’ve said indicates it hasn’t been as bad in the last ten or so years, have talked about the fact that there have been times when they had to fight like hëll to keep a black student who liked something and excelled at it on that path because, when it became known among the other black students in the school, they ridiculed the kid mercilessly. The student would get a new one ripped into them daily about selling out their blackness or trying to be white because what they liked was arbitrarily deemed to be “white” rather than “black” culture. And sometimes the teachers lost the fight against peer pressure.
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You sit down and start looking up all of the country music acts that are out there, and the reality is that there aren’t a lot of black acts at all. And you can claim all you want that there has been an interest in participating in the scene but black people weren’t allowed, but the reality is it was allowed from day one. But, just as there was likely institutional racism in the system here and there that would work against them going to larger stages and venues, the truth is that you saw very few smaller black acts even trying to break in to the country music scene for a very long time. A part of that, and it’s a percentage number neither you nor I could ever give an accurate answer to, was probably attributable to years of some people being told either they shouldn’t try because they’d just be locked out anyway or that doing that white stuff was them selling out their blackness.
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As percentages go, it may not be much I’m sure. But, having seen the effect it had on schoolmates and friends in their younger days with regards to giving some things up or putting them on the backburner, I’m also sure that it did have an impact of at least some small level.
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And, you know what? Way back when when those ignorant áššhølëš would try to tell my friends that they were trying to be white or they were selling out their blackness, I said that was some of the dumbest fûçkìņg šhìŧ I’d heard anyone say because who someone was, what they enjoyed, and what they could be in life had nothing to do with skin color. And I would be told by those ignorant áššhølëš that I was wrong because someone couldn’t be black unless they acted a certain way, talked a certain way, and did and did not do certain things.
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Well, it’s now a couple or more decades later and the same type of ignorant áššhølëš have expanded their game. Because, now, the same type of type of ignorant áššhølëš are trying to force everyone to fit into little boxes and tell them not to act or be anything that’s not already in that box that they, the ignorant áššhølëš, allow to be there. And they’re trying to do it by making up even more ignorant bûllšhìŧ than just the garbage they spewed at my friends in the late 80s and the 90s.
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Fûçk those ignorant áššhølëš.
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And what’s really annoying about these ignorant áššhølëš is how much ignorant bûllšhìŧ they make up in their crusade to build walls and dumb everyone down to their level even as the world around them is more accepting than ever about letting people be whatever they want to be despite skin color, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
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“Country music and other institutions claimed to be that of white culture lock black people out. We’re not allowed to be part of it.”
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Except that, even given the caveat I gave above, this has been becoming more and more of a bûllšhìŧ statement for a very long time now. It’s an especially bûllšhìŧ statement when it comes to your comments made about country music and the Grand Ole Opry; comments you made based on falsehoods you believed to be true. But I’m sure there are at least a few people out there who love having other people making such claims based on false information and beliefs because it gives them an excuse to not even try and then blame everyone but themselves.
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“(do you want your N-word privileges, too?)”
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Why, no, but you apparently want your dûmbášš privileges for the evening. Again, you resort the tactic of not having something that intelligently rebuts a point, so you scream racism.
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“So black people who can only trace their origins back to “we were here” just create their own culture. And we hold onto it pretty jealously for good reason”
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“I get that you won’t understand this. “
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“You still subscribe to a mindset that blithely ignores the fact that white culture tends to steamroll everyone else. And let’s make it clear, black people don’t necessarily want to lock white people out of their culture. They just want some acknowledgment for it, rather than it being picked up because black people come up with some cool stuff – but it could be cooler without them in it.”
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Wow, that was a lot of bs rolled into a short amount of words.
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You know what, you create any culture you want for yourself. Feel free. As a matter of fact, you personally can create any personal culture you want to create for yourself no matter how wild it is. I mean, if you want to dress in clothing that looks like the height of fashion from 1830s Hong Kong, have your face painted with woad like the old Scottish, get a gig at a show playing Czechoslovakian folk songs on weekends, and spend days making artwork based on Maya art designs during the week; knock yourself out. More power to you. And, frankly, whatever you want to do is none of my business or anyone else’s business.
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And, being none of my business or anyone else’s business, neither I nor anyone else has any right or authority of any kind or on any level to tell you that you can’t do any of that. And no one else even needs to understand it at all.
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But, you know what? Not you, not the Bonita Tindles of the world, not any of the other “cultural appropriation” screamers have any right or authority of any kind or on any level to tell anyone else anything on the matter, because it’s none of your business. It’s none of your business or my business if someone else, no matter their color, wants to dress in Japanese Kimonos all day, sing Moroccan folk songs at a club for tips at night, and weave Mexican baskets all day for sale at the market every weekend. And they don’t owe you, me, or anyone else anything for doing any of that.
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Hey, you want examples of what worthless First World Problems can look like?
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Imagine living in a country where there used to be great evil dragons, but all of the great evil dragons were slain decades and centuries ago. However, there still existed some lesser evil not quite dragons after that. But, most of them were slain within a few decades of the last evil dragon being slain. The age of the evil dragon and the lesser evil not quite dragons has been over for a long time. Sure, there are still a few slimy monsters creeping around and occasionally leaping out from their hiding places, but they’re nothing compared to what the dragons were. By and large, there’s no need for dragon slayers anymore. At best, we need a few slimy monster wranglers here and there, but most of us have gotten pretty good about banding together to put down slimy monsters when they pop up.
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But, then, a new generation comes along and declares that they’re dragon slayers and they will slay the dragons. But there are no dragons. So, the self-proclaimed dragon slayers having no dragons to slay decide to invent them. So the self-proclaimed dragon slayers go out and find tiny, harmless, defenseless lizards. They proclaim that, after all, the lizards have scales and eyes and claws and teeth like dragons, so they must be dragons. They then declare war on them while trying to convince the gullible in the land that these are really dragons and the others need to join them in the new war against the dragons.
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But, in reality, they’re doing nothing of value. At best, they’re running around and looking like idiots to most reasonable people by declaring war on lizards and claiming they’re dragons. At worst, they’re pointlessly harassing people who like having the lizards in their yards because the lizards eat bugs. And then, at the end of a long day’s being useless nuisances, they engage in large circle jerks where they congratulate each other over the valiant battles they’ve fought and the dragons they killed that day.
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That’s the cultural appropriation screamers in a nutshell.
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They missed the fight against slavery. They missed segregation. They missed the fight for the right to vote and the larger civil rights fights. They missed eras of the Chinese being banned and the Japanese being interned in camps. But, dámņ it, they want to fight the good fight too!
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So they basically make pests of themselves and pretend that people practicing yoga who aren’t Indian are bad. They pretend that people wearing Kimonos who aren’t Japanese are bad. They pretend that people who aren’t black who wear dreadlocks are bad. They pretend that people making art that doesn’t fit their perception of what art people with that skin color should be making are horrible thieves. And then they pretend that all of these things and more are every bit as bad and evil as the things they missed out on fighting decades and centuries ago and pretend that seeing these things causes such emotional stress and turmoil and pain that it triggers them and forces them to act for the greater social good.
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But all the Bonita Tindles and the other appropriation screamers really are is useless, ignorant jáçkáššëš. And, frankly, the way they can best serve society is probably by finding jobs where they don’t need to leave their homes very much and then learning how to deal with whatever personal inadequacies they actually have that causes them to act like idiots.
“Well, that started weak and went downhill into argle yargle bargle blaagghhh…”
This, from the guy who complains about my posts being way too long…
“This, from the guy who complains about my posts being way too long…
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Really? I’d love to know when I did that, Jack. I’ve never been the TLDR type, and for as long as I’ve been here I’ve posted the not so occasional long post.
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Or, did you just have nothing actually worth saying and decided to just make something up in order to post?
@#&#@!!!! tagging errors….
Well, I could remind you, but no doubt you’d declare I made that up too.
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On second thought, though, I may have been making a mountain out of a molehill. The novel you posted could have been much worse; for example, you could have included a subplot about how it isn’t possible to have a rational discussion about any racial issues these days because too many minorities are just so **ghasp** ANGRY all the time.
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And I cite that because, well, you’ve done it before. Just after Peter was declared unwelcome at ScansDaily, I believe. Or… maybe it was Peter who wrote that, and you supporting it as usual?
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(Sigh) I swear, it’s a job and a half remembering what you’re not supposed to remember around here…
Wow…
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You’re a liar, Jack.
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You’re also a piece of šhìŧ.
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I have never said that you can’t discuss such matters with minorities because minorities are just so gosh darned angry all the time. Never. Nor has Peter at any time that I’ve been here, and I’ve been here on and off since 2003.
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The closest thing I’ve ever said here or anywhere to that is that some people- people, as in all colors, all genders and orientations, and on both sides of the political spectrum and no more all of any one group than Alex Jones represents all of the right -look for things to be offended by in pursuit of pushing their agenda. And that’s something I still stand by, because it’s true.
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If you’re going to try to claim that is the same as the bûllšhìŧ you’re pushing, well, the best that can be said of you is that you’re one of the biggest idiots on God’s green Earth. And, frankly, we know you’re not that stupid.
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So that leaves the other option. You’re just a liar, and a worthless piece of šhìŧ.
This is why I shrouded him, Jerry. I didn’t want to give him more opportunities to lie.
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