Wigger Lover

Hip Hop, Whiteness and Cultural Authenticity: A Dialogue with Soul Sista #1

A little something different today.  A think piece from the independent student newspaper of Cornell University.  Why is it that so many of college newspapers target these issues while the mainstream press uses their gossip page to cover what Paris Hilton thinks of Kim Kardashian's ass and chalking it up as "racial dialogue?"

By Evan Baker Smith

Imagine the scene: Cornel West’s hip hop album bumps through the speakers, rum marinates cola splashed in both glasses, and a sultry incense of sorts seasons the air. A black woman and a white man begin politicking in a first floor apartment. M1 of deadprez and KRS-One are featured on the track, a gun cocking keeps time, and Dr. West drops true knowledge: “Let these gay and lesbian brothers and sisters live a life of dignity.” At that very moment, an Escalade full of white men rolls slow down the street, blaring Weezy’s “Lollipop.”

Soul Sista #1: I hate Lil’ Wayne.

White Man: Yeah, the content is whack, but the flow is crazy. Nobody’s really spittin’ that innovative.

SS#1: A’ight, but my question is, why do so many white boys love bumping that ignorant-ass-isht? It seems like they’re trying to live out some pseudo-fantasy that extends past a desire to be gangsta but also a desire to be black — which creeps me out. Voyeurism is dangerously othering and has been since the days of minstrelsy. Is there something qualitatively different now that white boys aren’t painting their faces black anymore? What does it mean that these white boys are so enamored of a culture that has black roots, even thought it’s transcontinental in scope today?

WM: Wow … heavy hittin’ questions. Um … I love how you ask me to speak on behalf of the entire white male species; I’ll do my best. I think you’re really right: there is a strange fascination with blackness and the ghetto — I think probably because the suburban world of strip malls and chain restaurants, and the rest of the world which is always mediated through the computer screen, TV and stereo, has so sapped life of its substance that many privileged people strive to experience something more “real.” The funny part is, most of their experience with hip hop is filtered by MTV and record labels into another lifeless banter that is performed as spectacle to be consumed in safe spaces. Not to mention that the presupposition that Blackness offers something more “real” is just another form of fetishitization and evidence of the oppression white people face as privileged persons under the ideology of white supremacy. White persons often look for cultures to belong to — as if we don’t have one of our own, as if we can’t have one of our own. I think the challenge is to own up to the ugliness of what we have created and work humbly for its betterment. That means fighting racism, patriarchy and class-based oppression. Only in these struggles can European Americans create a culture that is both beautiful and authentic.

SS#1: But there’s a ton of realness in the suburbs that white people don’t talk about because they’re too busy denying it while they bump Weezy in the Escalade. By the way, I didn’t ask you to speak on behalf of all white men, it’s just that I’m so used to being asked to speak on behalf of black people that sometimes I slip up. To do so would be to ask questions as they appear in books, cable news and even newspapers, that is: the issues of hip hop are always talked about as black and white, rich and poor, male and female: a bunch of false binaries that we’re taught to take as natural. Continuing the discussion in this manner is really limiting us from digging deeper into the ways we are all products and consumers of this so-called culture, which is really a composite of many cultures.

WM: I agree. This so-called culture is a composite of organic cultural movements that have been co-opted by the music industry, mass manufactured and sold in easy to understand packages through which we define ourselves. I mean, it’s true that a lot of hip hop is dumb misogynistic but to simply blame MCs — usually black men — for their misogyny without examining its true roots in the hegemonic white spaces — the music industry, for example — is to poorly understand both patriarchy and hip hop.

SS#1: True. Akon and Snoop are busy talking about females grinding on poles and these rich ass white boys are out here bumping it in their whips without thinking about all the black and Latina women out there getting HIV who are obscured by the hegemonic culture that these rappers are copying in order to sell records and be heard in the first place. Yeah, these so-called hip hop fans might know about all the latest beef or even the roots of it, but they are nothing more than passive consumers of what is produced for them by record labels. I mean if you really want to talk about the authenticity of the music and the consumers of it, then let’s talk about the non-recognition and lack of active engagement with the real struggles that happen day to day. To be an authentic fan means to take seriously and think critically about the content of the material you are consuming and most importantly to act on it in your daily life.

WM: Yes, indeed. Sounds like praxis to me.

Evan Baker Smith is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at ebsmith@cornellsun.com. Praxis Makes Perfect appears alternate Tuesdays.

"...leave me and Vice-President Santiago to our own devices!"

The article below is from the February 18th edition of The Daily Emerald--the student newspaper of the University of Oregon. The author makes an argument that Chris Rock and Dave Chapelle helped pave the way for Barack Obama's presidential run.

Someone has to tell this kid that Head of State wasn't a documentary. Still, this is better than one op-ed writer's recent claim that "history shows us that, besides carrying the baggage of a guaranteed asteroid strike, black heads of state also give terrorists extra motivation to destroy the United States." The Daily Emerald joint is titled "Racial equality via stand-up comedy and kickball."

My first and only experience as a racial minority came during third grade, and lasted about a week.

Don't get me wrong. As you can see by my mug shot floating just inches from your face, my skin is white, and has remained invariably so for my whole life. But for that one week in the third grade something about the way I looked felt different. I spent that week at a public elementary school in Atlanta where, in my class of nearly 30 students, I was one of three who were white. It's obvious that single isolated experience brought me no closer to the "black experience" than any other culturally conflicted white liberal. But in the midst of Black History Month it's interesting for me to remember the way I felt sitting at that desk in Atlanta. I very nearly drowned in 20 foot waves of my own self-consciousness. Was everyone looking at me because I was new? Or was it because I was white?

...

Now that's not to say we haven't made significant gains in the state of our race relations. After all, who would have thought once upon a time that our generation's two smartest, funniest and most provocative social commentators would be black men? Of course I'm talking about Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle.

Some of you may be wondering why - at a time when an increasing number of people seem prepared to elect the country's first black president - these two comedians are particularly significant. It's because they've helped pave the way. The greatness and importance of their craft comes from how they've pushed racial stereotypes into our face, forcing us to confront them and, therefore, confront our nation's past.

At first they shock us. "Do you know what the good side of crack is?" Chris Rock asks in his HBO standup special Bring the Pain. "If you're up at the right hour, you can get a VCR for $1.50. You can furnish your whole house for $10.95." But once the initial discomfort fades, they offer insights into a world white people like myself can't ever fully identify with.

They are the worst enemy of the likes who would advocate for a colorblind society. They teach us it's OK to see a white person and think, "That is a white person," or to see a black person and think, "That is a black person." It's that white elephant sitting in the dark corner of your head. They simply pull it out from the shadows so that it can be laughed at or ridiculed, then discarded so we can all move forward.

As it turned out, that fear I felt in Atlanta was a product of my imagination. And it didn't even matter because by the time we'd finished playing kickball at lunchtime I was everyone's friend. I was too young then to understand the centuries of history that had fueled my perception of blacks, and how I thought they perceived me. There's a lot to it I still don't understand. I guess the years that followed have taught me no one's closer than anyone else to ending prejudice in our country. But at the very least, putting it out there for us to talk about is a whole lot more effective than simply pretending it doesn't exist.

Why White Kids Love (Political) Hip Hop

This is a very strong article. From today's student newspaper for Ithaca College:

Shifting the revolution
By Liz Taddonio Senior Writer | December 6th, 2007

A crowd hovered close to the stage in Emerson Suites last month as political rapper M-1 brought his flow to the African-Latino Society’s “The Essence of Hip-Hop.” In army fatigues, he rapped about social injustice, racial inequality, political corruption and the hypocrisy of police, lyrics apt for a Black Panther revival. Fists pumped in the air to the music of resistance, change and revolution.

The majority of those fists were white.

Those fists belonged to college students who were not taught to overthrow the system in an immediate revolution, but to follow the flow. They enrolled in a private liberal arts college for a degree to enter into a set structure — to take part in a functioning society. The tension in the room was toward the system they were fighting just as hard to enter as to overthrow.

From the onset of the Neilson Soundscan system to track music sales, around March of 1991, record companies saw hip-hop as a commodity. Fifteen years later, hip-hop has evolved and devolved, transformed and conformed, but it’s never been able to shake its roots. And now, as political hip-hop gains a massive following in college-aged, middle- and upper-middle-class white kids, the question of the music’s integrity is laid bare on the stage.

From its beginnings, hip-hop was created by black America as an expression of the present tense. Sean Eversley-Bradwell, an assistant professor in the Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity, said hip-hop was an outlet for the movement’s “in-group” to have a conversation. The expansion of audience, however, was inevitable and important for the continuation of the genre.

“Hip-hop wouldn’t have grown the way it has without white folks being a part of it,” he said. Sean Fennessey ’03, associate music editor at Vibe magazine, said when hip-hop went mainstream, a white audience decided to emulate and understand it, whether genuine or dishonest in those attempts. Still, the audience’s expansion did not necessarily mean the death of a cultural movement.

“I wouldn’t get too caught up in the idea that ‘oh, the golden age of hip-hop is over so all the courageous names in hip-hop are done,’ — it’s just a different animal and it’s always changing,” he said. “I’m also not in the mind-set that more people hearing something is a negative thing. I think that’s a positive thing.”

The price for hearing that music is rather steep. Tickets for the biggest hip-hop shows, like July’s Rock the Bells, or individual acts like Immortal Technique, Wu Tang Clan and The Coup, run between $50 and $100. Eversley-Bradwell said the inequality in spending power between black and white audiences leaves some shows inaccessible.

“We’re quick to talk about the poverty that black folks live in when we talk about schools or social health services, but all the sudden we feel like they’re completely affluent when it comes to buying music,” he said.

Though the economics of the situation play a factor in the whiteness of audiences, the struggle hip-hop represents may actually be more to blame for its gentrification. Sam Aronowitz, a senior sociology major who attended multiple hip-hop shows this year, said his exposure to the genre increased in college. He said live hip-hop allows him to participate in a culture he wasn’t raised in.

“It’s an easy way to feel like you’re part of something — it’s a good way to vent your frustration with the system,” he said. “Maybe [the audience] is angry because they’re privileged and they understand that — they know what’s going on, and it’s their way of siding with the other side.”

At the same time, chanting lyrics, head nodding and clenched fists at concerts don’t necessarily indicate a change in thought. Matt Farrell, a senior television-radio major, said a complacent audience remains stagnant because they’re in their own in-group discussion.

“If an audience is already political — sociology or politics majors in college — it just reiterates what they already know,” he said. “It’s masturbation.”

Use of music as a weapon for change isn’t anything new — it’s something this generation has been taught to cling to through their baby boomer parents. But Anne Tregea, a junior sociology major, said the hippies of the ’60s created the world we’re in now, the one we’re frustrated with.

“They started the revolution, but they didn’t follow through,” she said. “They didn’t finish it.” Farrell said the problem with hip-hop is not that it doesn’t inspire people to change the way things are, but that it doesn’t show them how to do it.

“A political connection is a prerequisite to action,” Farrell said. “We don’t have a draft — we don’t have any direct connection even though we’re so angry. There is no clearly defined revolution.” Overtly political hip-hop also has the function of potentially distancing an audience from the reality of the situation. Eversley-Bradwell said that without action, politics become a type of “play.”

“Hip-hop is play, but the realities it arises from are pretty brutal conditions in many urban communities and rural communities,” he said. “ ... You can only lie to yourself, saying it doesn’t make a difference — it’s all play.”

Despite the popularity of political hip-hop with white audiences, lines are drawn between serious politics and diluted ring tones. Fennessey said right now it’s about sales, and ring tone rappers are moving units.

“Ring tones are what the major labels are signing up for, and those are the artists they’re putting out and pursuing,” he said. “They’re not pursuing new artists or career artists. Artist development is at an all-time low, and so all those things are contributing to the kind of music you’re hearing.”

Darren Foley, a senior cinema and photography major, said he’s been freestyling with friends for years. He said his appreciation for intelligent and intricate beats leaves him jaded by popular hip-hop. “Easy-listening rap is formulaic,” Foley said. “Labels know what people want to hear. If political hip-hop had the same flow and beats, it might sell better.”

In an interview with WICB DJ Jake Frumkin after the “Essence of Hip-Hop” show, M-1 talked about providing a backdrop of struggle to the music of the rappers who enjoy commercial success with conforming beats and lyrics.

“I don’t have a problem with reporting reality — that’s been my favorite,” M-1 said. “At the end of the day, that’s what it’s about, you have to be able to put this thing in the proper context. The freedom in it is that [mainstream] rappers now are absolved of that responsibility.”

Esther Paek, a senior television-radio major, said to change the direction of popular hip-hop, the mind-set of the consumers must also be changed.

“Maybe if we change what the consumer society keeps desiring, we’ll change how the game is played,” she said. “Right now, the ball is in the consumer’s court. Do we keep playing the same old game with the same old rules, or do we switch it up?”

Eversley-Bradwell agreed, and said demand may affect supply.

“Hip-hop is not black or white — it’s green,” he said. “If a certain genre is selling, those record executives don’t care one way or another. They don’t care if it’s destructive or it’s positive as long as it’s making money. I think there’s ways in which you can use it against itself.” Still, fans like Farrell believe music’s first function is entertainment, and the mixing of a popular aesthetic with honest, insightful lyrics are the best way to infuse music with political undertones.

“I take issue with the idea that I shouldn’t be listening to music that excites me just because it isn’t ethical,” he said. “Should I bend my taste if the music doesn’t excite me, motivate me or even entertain me?”

As M-1 concluded his show last month, he asked for the audience’s promise to go out and start the revolution. Farrell said even if the audience walked out and went back to their comfortable lives, the experience may have a lasting effect.

“Maybe they’ll go on and become the man, and remember what it felt like to be angry and young at these concerts pumping their fists, and bend a little,” he said.

"Daddy's little girl, but not the girl that daddy knew / Daddy never had a clue of what his little girl would do"

Ohio State University student Antonio Ciaccia has illustrated how his parents have wasted $8,568 in tuition by writing a piece for the school's Sentinel newspaper entitled 'The Black Guy's Guide to Landing White Chicks.' Cicacci admits to being white at the start ("I'm a total honky. At a healthy mix of Italian and Croatian...") so it's kind of funny to see a white boy imaging himself as black in order to bag white girls. You can read the whole thing on the link provided, but a few "tips" were especially whack:

Wear Ohio State gear wherever you go
Let's face it, most white girls come from white backgrounds, and they don't really know much about your race. For that matter, she doesn't know much about you. Use this to your advantage. The brilliant duo of your skin tone and your Ohio State gear will leave her no other alternative than to assume that you must be an athlete. After all, everybody knows black people are better athletes than white people. Think about it. There are tons of black guys that play for the Buckeyes, and white girls don't know anything about most of them. Say you are a cornerback if you're a smaller guy or a linebacker if you're bigger. I shit you not - I once knew a girl who stumbled out of house party bedroom exclaiming, "I just swallowed National Championship cum!" Yes my friends, your little fib will act as the Gatorade that will quench the celebrity thirst of dumb white sluts all over campus.

Join a white girl's study group
But, maybe you're not looking for a slut - totally understandable. So, try this one out. It's a truly unfair stereotype that black people are inferior in academics to white people. While it is a totally false assumption, and most people do not attribute such academic values to race, there are a few uncultured vixens still at large. So join the study group of a white girl from class. Your interest in academics may surprise her and leave her thinking, "Wow, he's no dummy. Maybe he won't kill me." After studying, make your move. Not only will she do you, but she'll probably do your homework too.

Just be a low-down dirty gangsta
If you don't like any of the above suggestions, don't sweat it. Some girls just love taboo. Think about it. Daddy's precious little girl leaves the white suburbs to find the exact kind of guy daddy never wanted her to be with. Daddy spent years being overprotective and telling her "no" to all the naughty things she wanted to back in high school. What better revenge than for her to bring you and your hardcore persona back home for Thanksgiving dinner with the whole family? Fulfill every unfair, negative stereotype in the book. Rap to her. Swear at her. Degrade her. Steal from her. Each one will just make her want you more and more. Then cheat on her or knock her up. She'll fucking love that shit.

Higher Learning

[The Broward Times recently ran an article on white students attending historically black colleges. It's like Kamron in House Party 2!]

White students say they’ve taken valuable experiences from their time at black colleges. Skin color, the students say, is much more of a factor away from the campuses than it is on them.

“You should get to know people based on who they are,” Roberts said. “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”

The first of what are now called Historically Black Colleges and Universities was Cheyney University in Pennsylvania, which was founded in 1837 so that blacks — barred from attending many traditional schools — could get an advanced education. Since then, more than 100 such institutions have been established in the U.S. and about 285,000 students attend the schools each year.

Lawsuits have forced many of the schools — about half of them are public — to diversify their student bodies, Baskerville said. In the 2005-06 school year, nearly 10 percent of their students were white, according to her association’s data.

Scholarships, new programs and recruitment have attracted dozens of whites to schools such as South Carolina State University, where they account for around 4 percent of the student body, said university spokeswoman Erica Prioleau.

The school has a minority affairs office for white students, similar to those found for non-white students at traditionally white schools.

A handful of whites attend Atlanta’s private Morehouse College. The school hasn’t been aggressively recruiting whites, so they make a “conscious decision” to attend, said Sterling Hudson, dean of admissions and records for the college.

Steven Schukei did just that. The Morehouse alumnus, who now works as a vice president in technology for New York-based investment firm Goldman Sachs, said he gained a perspective that he wasn’t offered while growing up and going to school in Nebraska, Colorado and South Carolina.

“There was always this sort of disjoint between what I thought I should be learning and what I actually did learn,” said Schukei, 30. “And I thought Morehouse would be an opportunity to expand my horizons and to see a different perspective on the world that we live in.” Schukei remembers Morehouse as a “refuge from the rest of the world where what race you are doesn’t really matter.”

“Conversations that people typically wouldn’t feel comfortable having about race can happen on Morehouse’s campus where they just wouldn’t happen anyplace else,” he said.

"I've gone white-girl hazy..."

Boise State's Independent Student Newspaper recently did a feature on Dontdatehimgirl.com a website for "vengeful exes [to create] a profile for their ex-boyfriend or husband, complete with a profile picture and short description of what they look like and why they are so “undateable.” It's no surprise that some of these undesireables are "wiggers":

Finally, there is “Wigger” and “Goofy Sociopath.” These two undateables don’t have much in common, except for their amusing profile descriptions on dontdatehimgirl.com. Both profiles contain information that will set them apart from other dating candidates forever.

Dontdatehimgirl.com says this about “Wigger:” “What a freak! Watch the hell out — this guy is evil … He stole money out of my purse and had sex with my 72-year-old neighbor.”

There’s nothing to say, except “eew.”

“Goofy Sociopath” might be acceptable dating material, if you’re feeling nostalgic for a little Vanilla Ice.

“He has blond hair and blue eyes but thinks he is a gangster of color. The classic high school drop-out stuck on 1980s hip-hop. See Vanilla Ice for more reference. DON’T DATE HIM GIRLFRIENDS — RUN LIKE HELL.

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, it is time for all of us to take in the words of cinematic wigger Jay Billington Bulworth: "Rich people have always stayed on top by dividing white people from colored people. But white people got more in common with colored people then they do with rich people. We just gotta eliminate them. White people, black people, brown people, yellow people, get rid of 'em all. All we need is a voluntary, free spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody til they're all the same color."

"I'ma teach this cat, how to live in the ghetto / Keepin it retro-spective from the get go"

A few weeks back photographs leaked online of a "ghetto fabulous" party at the University of Texas started a controversy at the college. As reported by the Daily Texan student newspaper the photos showed white law students sporting "Afro wigs, large necklaces with medallions and name-tags with fake historically black or Hispanic names while holding 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor" at a party. When the photographs were brought to the attention of the dean of law students he ruled that he "didn't believe the students were malicious or racially motivated and no disciplinary action would be taken."

Similar parties have taken place in the last few years at the University of Chicago, Cornell, and Texas A&M. Many websites link to photos of these events online. It's taken the often observant Bob Jensen to make a few observations on these events in a colum that appeared in Zmag:

The motivations and views of participants may vary, but these parties have two consistent features: (1) white people mock African American and Latino people through stereotypes of the residents of low-income urban areas, while at the same time enjoying the feeling of temporarily adopting these looks and poses; and (2) the white folks typically do it without pausing to ponder what right they have as members of a dominant racial class to poach in this fashion on the lives of people of a subordinated racial class.

In other words, white people find pleasure in insulting non-white people while at the same time safely “slumming’ for cheap thrills in that non-white world, all the time oblivious to the moral and political implications.

...

Even with the gains of the civil-rights movement, U.S. society is still white supremacist in material terms (there are deep, enduring racialized disparities in measures of wealth and well-being, some of which haven’t improved in the past four decades) and ideology (many white people continue to believe that the culture and politics of Europe are inherently superior). To pretend that things such as a ghetto party are not rooted in those racist realities is to ignore fundamental moral and political issues in an unjust society. It’s not about “negative racial overtones” -- it’s about racism, whether conscious or not. It’s not about being “racially insensitive” -- it’s about support for white supremacy, whether intended or not.

These incidents, and the universities’ responses, also raise a fundamental question about what we white people mean when we say we support “diversity.” Does that mean we are willing to invite some limited number of non-white people into our space, but with the implicit understanding that it will remain a white-defined space? Or does it mean a commitment to changing these institutions into truly multicultural places? If we’re serious about that, it has to mean not an occasional nod to other cultural practices, but an end to white-supremacist practices. It has to mean not only acknowledging other cultural practices but recognizing that the wealth of the United States and Europe is rooted in the destruction of some of those cultures over the past 500 years, and that we are living with the consequences of that destruction.