listen to anti-racist music

It's Friday! How about some music?

Here's a video by Jasiri X called "What if the Tea Party was Black" (lyrics below).

Got any other anti-racist music to recommend in the comments?

YouTube says,

A few months ago, Tim Wise wrote a widely circulated article called, "Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black" which challenged America to take a close look at the hypocrisy of the Right Wing. Now, a Pittsburgh rapper is accepting his challenge in true Hip Hop form. Jasiri X has released a video called "What if the Tea Party was Black." The Hip Hop artist says that he got the idea when Paradise,a member of the pro-black rap group X-Clan, forwarded him a copy of Wise's article. "I saw the article and I liked the concept," says the rapper. So Jasiri hit the studio with producer Cynik Lethal while Paradise grabbed his video camera and they went on their mission to defeat the Right Wing propaganda machine.

Here's the video. Jasiri X has also done a followup piece (here), responding to the critics in the 1500+ comments inspired by this one.

LYRICS

What if the tea party was black
Holding guns like the Black Panther Party was back
If Al was Rush Limbaugh and Jesse was Sean Hannity
And Tavis was Glenn Beck would you harm they families
If Sarah Palin was suddenly Sistah Souljah
Would you leave it to the voters or go and get the soldiers
Yall know if the tea party was black
The government would have been had the army attack

What if Michael Baisden was on ya FM dial
For 3 hours every day calling the president foul
Would they say free speech or find evidence how
To charge him with treason like see he's unamerican now
What if Minister Farrakhan prayed for the death
Of the commander in chief that he be laid to rest
Would they treat it as the gravest threat or never make an arrest
Even today he's still hated for less
What if President Obama would have lost the election
Quit his job so he could go talk to the left and
Bash the government for being off of direction
Fraught with deception
And told black people they want all of our weapons
And we want our own country and called for secession
Would he be arrested and tossed in corrections
For trying to foster aggression
Against the people's lawful selection
Our questions

What if the tea party was black
Holding guns like the Black Panther Party was back
If Al was Rush Limbaugh and Jesse was Sean Hannity
And Tavis was Glenn Beck would you harm they families
If Sarah Palin was suddenly Sistah Souljah
Would you leave it to the voters or go and get the soldiers
Yall know if the tea party was black
The government would have been had the army attack

What If black people went on Facebook and made a page
That for the death of the president elect we prayed
Would the creators be tazed and thrown in a cage
We know the page wouldn't have been displayed all these days
What if Jeremiah Wright said that everybody white
Wasn't a real Americna would you feel scared of him
If he had a militia with pictures that depict the president as Hitler
They would kill and bury that
Wait
What if Cynthia McKinney lamented the winning of the new president
And hinted he wasn't really a true resident
With no proof or evidence
Would the media treat it like a huge press event
They would have attacked whatever group she represents
They would have called her a kook on precedent
And any network that gave her due preference
Would be the laughing stock of the news so our question is

What if the tea party was black
Holding guns like the Black Panther Party was back
If Al was Rush Limbaugh and Jesse was Sean Hannity
And Tavis was Glenn Beck would you harm they families
If Sarah Palin was suddenly Sistah Souljah
Would you leave it to the voters or go and get the soldiers
Yall know if the tea party was black
The government would have been had the army attack


h/t: Scott McLemee @ Crooked Timber

let their biases shape their perceptions of non-white people

In the following video, a teacher named Brad Wray (who's apparently a really cool teacher) sings a song that he wrote on the various types of cognitive bias; he wrote it to help his students study for a Psychology exam.

Which of the following biases do you think are most applicable to common white perceptions of, and interactions with, non-white people? (Maybe . . . all of them?)

Also, why not open this up a bit beyond stuff white people do -- what was the best teacher you ever had like? What did he or she do that really got through to you?

[Lyrics below]




I'm biased because I knew it all along...
hindsight bias... I knew it all along.

I'm biased because I put you in a category
in which you may or may not belong...
representativeness bias... don't stereotype this song

I'm biased because of a small detail
that throws off the big picture of the thing
anchoring bias... see the forest for the trees

I'm biased toward the first example
that comes to mind
availability bias... to the first thing that comes to mind

Oh oh bias
don't let bias into your mind

Bias don't try this
it'll influence your thinking and memories,
don't mess with these
but you're guilty of distorted thinking

Cognitive bias
your mind becomes blinded
decisions and problems
you've been forced to solve them wrongly

I'm biased because I'll only listen
to what I agree with
confirmation bias... your narrowminded if you are this

I'm biased because I take credit
for success but no blame for failure
self-serving bias... my success and your failure

I'm biased when I remember things the way
I would've expected them to be
expectancy bias... false memories are shaped by these

I'm biased becase I think my opinion now
was my opinion then
self-consistency bias ... but you felt different way back when

Oh oh bias don't let bias into your mind...
Bias don't try this,
it'll influence you thinking and memories,
don't mess with these
but you're guilty of distorted thinking.

Cognitive bias your mind becomes blinded;
decisions and problems
you've been forced to solve them wrongly!


h/t: lisa @ Sociological Images

claim that rap isn't music

This is a guest post by PMS Rhino.


I overheard a conversation today that bugged me a bunch, and then I realized that I'd heard this conversation probably a billion times before, and that I have even, much to my dismay at my younger self, participated in at times.

White people REALLY love to debate whether rap is music or not.

Many white people constantly degrade rap for a supposed lack of musical notes, for only having a beat, and for being classified more as poetry than music. They even get on the lyrics ("it's all chest thumping and degrading women,” etc.).

But seriously, I've never heard people wonder if Beethoven is music. If punk rock is music. If heavy metal is music. If country is music. Not once. If trance is music.

And it's so easy to find ways to discount those genres as music too. If you define music as having lyrics, then classical and trance is out. If you define music as an aurally pleasant string of notes, then a lot of punk and metal and industrial is out. If you classify music as requiring a strong back beat, country would generally be out, along with a lot of alternative music. Any musical genre can be discounted in some form or fashion, and yet rap is the only musical genre I have ever heard white people debate.

I don't even want to get started on the whole "chest thumping and degrading women" train of thought. While many rap lyrics contain these themes, so many other genres that do the exact same shit. Older rock music was FULL of lyrics about living a life of drugs and sex and violence, where women were nothing but groupies and sex objects to write songs about. Country can be just as bad (generally minus the drugs part, though). And even if we get into the more pop-songy stuff, classifying women as damsels in distress or delicate flowers waiting for a man isn't much better either.

Is there a musical blinder that white people wear so they can't see this? Is this common criticism a case of, "I don't like rap music [which maybe means, I don’t like black people?], therefore I can find more stuff wrong with it than the music I love and listen to"?

White people are rarely willing to recognize the huge amount of talent that most rap music requires. Won't acknowledge it in the slightest. It's “black people music” that's only about drugs and sex and violence. Or it's “not even music,” in which case the complainer can never seem to decide what it is, if not music.

I suspect this is all another semantic way to “other” minorities and their music yet again. Especially when you take into account that basically the only place men and women of color can get a musical career is in R&B, hip hop or rap (or another appropriately ethnic music genre). I don't know many punk bands or rock bands or country bands or pop or whatever include minorities. Those are pretty white musical genres out there.

So when white people say rap isn't music, they pretty much mean it's not music because it's black. Which pisses me off to no end. As does the fact that this debate is so constant and so consistent. I've heard it many, many times, and I can be fairly certain taht many other White people have heard it too. And even engaged in it.

Side note: I remember going to high school dances where the DJ would play a mix of all types of music. At smaller functions it was easier to notice, but the dance floor changed with genres. When "music" (white people music) was playing, all the white kids would jump up and dance their hearts out. When rap was playing, all the white kids quickly left the dance floor, and if more than one rap song would play in a row, every so often you'd hear a grumble about “why they have to play this rap stuff or whatever,” with such disdain. I danced to whatever, a beat was a beat, but the contempt many of my white friends and acquaintances held, because "how dare they play rap?!", was amazing.

So yeah, this kind of debate about the musical validity of rap has gotten on my nerves more and more, as I've heard it over and over again. And today I just didn't even want to get into it with these people. Generally, the people who don’t think rap is music cannot be swayed to think otherwise, no matter what you say about it.

The "debate" is more a statement of feelings and beliefs that the White person has, and they feel that their beliefs are completely correct, and they will never be convinced that rap is music. Oh, but it's okay if you like rap, they're not trying to tell you what to listen to. It's just not music. You can still like it, just don't think it's music like their white bands are. That would just be silly and ignorant. So there.

Is this something that other people notice too? Or did I just happen to hang around with particularly asshole-ish groups of people?

dismiss those who point out racism as "white guilt" mongers

I get mail -- oh boy, do I get mail. About half of the swpd-related emails I get are from readers who like what goes on here, and the other half are from people who very clearly don't. Among the latter, a few accuse me of pretending to be white. A LOT of them accuse the blog of being nothing but "typical white liberal guilt," and me of being such things as (and I quote) a "a purveyor of white guilt," a "white guilt monger," a "hopelessly guilty white liberal," "another guilty 'whitey,'" and "an ironically fascist white-guilt pusher." Another such reader sent me the above cartoon, assuming that I simply must be a "white liberal" who blindly adores Obama because he's black.

"White guilt." Please help me with this -- what is up with that term, anyway? And why does the phrase so often come from opponents of anti-racist efforts? What feelings are they expressing when they say that? And why is it a phrase I almost never hear from people who oppose racism? 

If you get accused of being a white-guilt pusher, how do you respond?

I have some tentative answers about those who use it a lot. Accusing others of "pushing white guilt" is a way of simply dismissing everything they're saying, instead of carefully listening and responding to the points they're making. There's also an assumption behind the use of the phrase that since "racism is in the past" ("we're post-racial now," etc.), whites have nothing to feel wrong or "guilty" about anymore.

Here's one more example to consider -- since it's Friday, some music, Kid Rock's "Amen." This song is apparently Kid Rock's attempt to provide his target demographic with an anthem. His audience is, clearly, very white, a segment, or maybe some segments, of the white population -- a mainstreamed, crossover appeal of "rock" mixed with overtones of "country."

The only time that whiteness is overtly marked in the lyrics and images occurs when, at 45 seconds,  Kid Rock asks, "how can we seek salvation when our nation's race relations got me feeling guilty of being white?"

And the totally implausible image that accompanies this moment? A group of scowling men carrying signs, one of which, carried by a black man at the center of the scene, says, "Race relations." (How's that for an anti-racist rallying cry? "Race Relations! Lemme hear ya now, RACE RELATIONS!") Presumably, these men are supposed to be hanging out on a corner somewhere, holding up vague, guilt-inducing signs, the same kind of people mentioned later in the song who "live off of handouts and favors." Aren't those code words for black people on welfare? (Never mind that the majority of welfare recipients are white.)

If you're not white, are you feeling guilty yet? For being, that is, one of those people who's always trying to make white people feel guilty, just because they're white?

I suppose I shouldn't be sarcastic. Especially on a Friday.

(If this video doesn't work for you, here's another version; transcribed lyrics below.)

"Amen"
by Kid Rock

It's another night in hell
Another child won't live to tell
Can you imagine what it's like to starve to death?

And as we sit free and well
Another soldier has to yell
"Tell my wife and children I love them" in his last breath

C'mon now amen, amen, amen

Habitual offenders, scumbag lawyers with agendas
I'll tell you sometimes people I don't know what's worse
Natural disasters, or these wolves in sheep clothes, pastors
Now Goddamn it I'm scared to send my children to church
And how can we seek salvation when our nation's race relations
Got me feeling guilty of being white?
But faith in human nature, our creator and our savior,
I'm no saint
But I believe in what is right

C'mon now amen, amen
I said amen, amen

Stop pointing fingers and take some blame,
Pull your future away from the flame
Open up your mind and start to live
Stop shortchanging your neighbors
Living off handouts and favors, and maybe
Give a little bit more than you got to give

Simplify, testify, identify, rectify
And if I get high stop being so uptight
It's only human nature
and I am not a stranger
So baby won't you stay with me tonight

When a calls away (?)
to break the sound (?)
I'm fadin down, I need someone
Oh to be someone
They just sinkin down, and holdin back
I hold the dawn and run
They don't save a child
Oh, to save a child

It's a matter of salvation from them
patience up above,
So don't give up so damn easy
on the one you love, one you love
Somewhere you got a brother, sister,
friend, grandmother, niece or nephew
Just dying to be with you
You know there's someone out there
who unconditionally, religiously, loves you
So just hold on 'cause you know it's true
And if you can take the pain
And you can withstand anything,
and one day
Stand hand in hand with the truth

I said amen, I said amen
I said amen, I said amen,

Amen

whiten their names

I have never felt any ethnic connection between the Greeks and me, other than how hairy I am.

-- Georgios Panayioutous

(a.k.a., George Michael)

    Alan Alda = Allphonso D'Abruzzo Jr

    Woody Allen = Allen Konigsberg

    Jennifer Aniston = Jennifer Joanna Aniston
       (her father, John Aniston, was originally Yannis Anastassakis)

    Fred Astaire = Frederick Austerlitz

    Lauren Bacall = Betty Joan Perske

    Anne Bancroft = Anna Maria Louisa Italiano

    Pat Benatar = Patricia Mae Andrzejewski

    Tony Bennett = Anthony Dominick Benedetto

    Jack Benny = Benjamin Kubelsky

    Milton Berle = Milton Berlinger

    Irving Berlin= Israel Baline

    Robert Blake = Michael Gubitosi

    Jon Bon Jovi = John Francis Bongiovi

    Ernest Borgnine = Ermes Effrom Borgnino

    Marlon Brando = Marlon Junior Brandeau

    Albert Brooks = Albert Einstein

    Mel Brooks = Mel Kaminsky

    George Burns = Nathan Birnbaum

    Nicolas Cage = Nicolas Coppola

    Cyd Charisse = Tula Ellice Finklea

    Andrew Dice Clay = Andrew Clay Silverstein

    Alice Cooper = Vincent Damon Furnier

    David Copperfield = David Seth Kotkin

    Elvis Costello = Declan MacManus

    Joan Crawford = Lucille Fay LeSueur

    David Crosby = David Van Cortlandt

    Tom Cruise = Thomas Mapother IV

    Tony Curtis = Bernard Schwartz

    Doris Day = Doris von Kappelhoff

    John Denver = Henry John Deutschendort Jr

    Angie Dickinson = Angeline Brown

    Kirk Douglas = Issur Danielovitch Demsky

    Bob Dylan = Robert Allen Zimmerman

    Linda Evans = Linda Evanstad

    Sally Field = Sally Mahoney

    W.C. Fields = William Claude Dukenfield

    John Ford = Sean Aloysius O’Fearna

    Great Garbo = Great Lovisa Gustafson

    James Garner = James Scott Bumgarner

    Kathie Lee Gifford = Kathryn Lee Epstein

    Cary Grant = Archibald Alexander Leach

    Joel Grey = Joel Katz

    Buck Henry = Henry Zuckerman

    Barbara Hershey = Barbara Herzstein

    Hulk Hogan = Terry Gene Bollea

    Judy Holliday = Judith Tuvim

    Harry Houdini = Erik Weisz

    Rock Hudson = Roy Harold Scherer Jr.

    Vanilla Ice = Robert Van Winkle

    Jenny Jones = Janina Stranski

    Ashley Judd = Ashley Tyler Ciminella

    Danny Kaye = David Daniel Kaminski

    Larry King = Lawrence Harvey Zeiger

    Ben Kingsley = Krishna Banji

    Cheryl Ladd = Cheryl Jean Stoppelmoor

    Michael Landon = Eugene Orowitz

    Ralph Lauren = Ralph Lifshitz

    Jerry Lewis = Joseph Levitch

    Sophia Loren = Sofia Villani Scicolone

    Peter Lorre = Laszio Lowenstein

    Madonna = Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone

    Karl Malden = Mladen Sekulovic

    Barry Manilow = Barry Alan Pincus

    Dean Martin = Dino Paul Crocetti

    Walter Matthau = Walter Matuschanskayasky Matthow

    Freddie Mercury = Farookh Bulsara

    Lorne Michaels = Lorne Michael Lipowitz

    Helen Mirren = Ilynea Lydia Mironoff

    Demi Moore = Demetria Guynes

    Chuck Norris = Carlos Ray Norris

    Jack Palance = Volodymyr Palahniuk

    Colonel Tom Parker = Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk

    Les Paul = Lester Polfuss

    Bernadette Peters = Bernadette lazzara

    Emo Philips = Phil Soltane

    Iggy Pop = James Newell Osterberg

    Natalie Portman = Natalie Hershlag

    Stefanie Powers = Stefania Zofya Federkiewicz

    Kelly Preston = Kelly Kamalelehua Palzis

    Joey Ramone = Jeffry Ross Hyman

    Tony Randall = Leonard Rosenberg

    Ginger Rogers = Virginia Katherine McMath

    Joan Rivers = Joan Alexandra Molinsky

    Edward G. Robinson = Emmanuel Goldenberg

    Wynona Ryder = Wynona Horowitz

    Jane Seymour = Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg

    Charlie Sheen = Carlos Estevez

    Martin Sheen = Ramón Estévez

    (Emilio Estevez = Emilio Estevez)

    Gene Simmons = Chaim Witz

    Anna Nicole Smith = VIckIe Lynn Hogan

    Robert Stack = Robert Modini

    Cat Stevens (later, Yusuf Islam) = Stephen Demetre Georgiou

    Jon Stewart = Jonathan Leibowitz

    Jennifer Tilly = Jennifer Chan

    Danny Thomas = Muzyad Yakhoob

    Ritchie Valens = Ricardo Valenzuela

    Frankie Valli = Francis Castelluccio

    Jesse Ventura = James George Janos

    Raquel Welch = Raquel Tejada

    Nathaniel West = Nathaniel Wallenstein

    Gene Wilder = Jerome Silberman

    Natalie Wood = Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko

perform in front of anonymous, silent asians

Q: Why is Shakira white?

A: Because she is pretty.

--Wiki Answers


The singer/celebrity/pop star Shakira was born in Colombia. Do many people nevertheless think of her as "white"? Or instead as "Hispanic," or a "Latina"?

Or even as something else? After all, as Wikipedia explains, "She is the only child of Nidya del Carmen Ripoll Torrado and William Mebarak Chadid who are of Lebanese, Spanish (Catalan) and Italian descent."

As for me, I'm pretty tempted to say that when Shakira appeared recently on Saturday Night Live, she was at least acting white, center-staging herself the way she did against a backdrop of homogenized Asians.

If she's going for some new global, World Music thing here, she's definitely not doing something new in terms or racial choreography. Didn't this mode of cultural appropriation go out with Gwen Stefani?




The women on the drums behind Shakira, by the way, are wearing outfits in a traditional Korean style. Here's a performance where you can actually hear some other women performing this distinctly Korean form of drumming.

Are the women behind Shakira actually even playing their drums? I couldn't hear them.




Is it fair or right for Shakira to use Korean (or probably to most Americans watching it, "Asian") women as a backdrop like this? She can do whatever she wants, I suppose, but again, it sure is a familiar white thing she's doing. And it involves such familiar white moves -- homogenizing Asians (which Western people have long done, often in far more injurious ways), and silencing them (even when they're playing drums!), and failing to recognize and appreciate their distinct national cultures and traditions.

Since Shakira's use of these women involves all of that, for the sole purpose of spicing up her own self-presentation, rather than for actual recognition and celebration of traditional Korean women drummers (whom she doesn't even significantly incorporate into her music), I don't think it's at all right or fair. I think it's racist. Her racial choreography perpetuates ongoing, racist conceptions of Asians, and it participates in the more or less general silencing of them in U.S. culture.

As I've noted in previous posts, aside from Gwen Stefani's silenced Harajuku Girls, an Australian clothing outlet recently used a notably silenced, homogeneous group of Asians the same way:

Here's another recent example, which I wrote about here, a commercial for the Palm Pre. Once again, a white woman at the center, and anonymous, homogeneous Asians collectively, uniformly serving as her backdrop.



It seems to me that what's happening in these and many other examples is a particularly stark version of cultural appropriation. It's as if in terms of race, the white individuals at the center are just that, individuals -- as if they don't have a race, nor any particular culture. As they stand front and center in the brighter lights, it's as though these individuals are supposed to be absorbing racial and cultural energy, which flows onto them from the auras of the silent, anonymous, but culturally rich others. And in the process, those individualized performers become, I suppose, less white.

But they don't become less white, do they? As Shakira's performance in another example of this racist staging demonstrates, they're actually acting as white as ever.

friday music -- "motown by white people"

Why do white people so often prefer black music when it's performed by white people?

Exhibit A: the following commercial, which appears to be authentic, and was posted at YouTube with the title "Motown By White People."

In light of yesterday's post on Harry Connick, Jr.'s denunciation of white-Australian minstrelsy, I'm tempted to ask if this group's work is a form of "blackface" as well. However, aside from how the men in this commercial, who call themselves The Blenders, are not literally wearing blackface, I suppose the distinction to be made between the two sets of white performers is something like "mockery" versus "admiration." Which is not to say that there aren't all sorts of more subtle, complex problems with the ubiquitous white appropriation of black music.

In addition to addressing that topic if you like, let's use this post as an open thread. Link away to other posts if you think we should read them, including your own, talk about whatever strikes you as worthy of chatter, but do play nice -- no spitting, please.

think the white house should be "white"

Ma'ariv

A: How many people in the U.S. think it's just plain wrong to have a "black" family in the "White" House?

B: A lot. Significant numbers. More than enough for it to be a real problem.

A: I agree. So, how many people in the U.S., when presented with photos like the following, would curse, and gnash their teeth, and like, hatch nefarious plots?

B: A lot. Significant numbers. More than enough for it to be a real problem.

A: I agree.

The White House, South Lawn
An event supporting Chicago's bid
for the 2016 Olympics
(September, 2009)

A: But then, Barack Obama's not quite the first "black" president, is he?

B: ??

A: Well, Toni Morrison said --

B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Respect to Toni Morrison, but like, that was then.

George Clinton
"Paint the White House Black"
(1993)

use racially coded jungle settings to promote world peace

And now, some Friday music.

Have you heard of Sir Ivan? He's a well-intentioned performer of techno music with an interesting background (see below).

I really wonder just what Sir Ivan was thinking when he made the following music video. He appears here in his getup as "Peaceman" (complete with billowing cape), who springs into action to spread world peace by, um . . . getting tribal Africans to stop fighting and start loving?




Will this tired setup of individualized white performers backed by anonymous black people, in jungles and other settings, ever die?

At least when the California Milk Processor Board made a video like this to promote milk, they seemed to be parodying such racist, colonialist configurations (but then, maybe not).

"Sir Ivan" is the creation of a U.S. citizen named Ivan Wilzig. According to Wikipedia,

"Sir" Ivan L. Wilzig (born c. 1956) or Peaceman is a musician who is best known for techno remixes of 1960s songs such as "Imagine" and "San Francisco". He is also founder of the nonprofit Peaceman Foundation. . . . Wilzig is the son of the late Siegbert (Siggi) Wilzig, who as a penniless German Holocaust survivor earned a fortune through finance. 59 of Ivan Wilzig's relatives were killed during the Holocaust. Ivan was born in Newark and grew up in Clifton, New Jersey as the oldest of the Wilzig children. . . .

He and his brother, Alan Wilzig, assisted his father in running the Trust Company Bank of New Jersey. Most of Ivan Wilzig's work at the bank was in public relations and marketing; he tried one year as a corporate lawyer but hated it. In 2000 "Sir Ivan" abandoned his banking career to begin a career in music.

According to Sir Ivan's web site, he also established The Peaceman Foundation,

a private foundation which supports an array of charities dedicated to fighting Hate Crimes and treating the victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Sir Ivan is donating 100 percent of his recording artist net profits from his album to his Peaceman Foundation. To further promote peace through his music and foundation, Sir Ivan always performs in peace capes, which has earned him the title “PEACEMAN,” the rock star superhero fighting for peace.

These efforts seem noble, and Sir Ivan's music has apparently acquired a fair number of fans, so charity funds are presumably reaching some people who could use them. Nevertheless, this video for his version of "Kumbaya" needs to be called out. Its arrangement of one white body and a lot of black bodies revives, as if from a collective white unconscious, a fantasized, paternalistic relationship. This is an old dream, a fantasy about superior white men who bestow their benevolence upon inferior, primitive, alternately childish and hypersexualized African "natives."

The problems with this fantasy are, of course, multiple and complex. The presumptuous white supremacy that has helped to justify several centuries of suffering and resource-plundering remains within the collective white psyche. This lingering presumption provides white people, even those with the best, most "charitable" intentions, with ready-made narrative structures. These narratives place white individuals at the center, and non-white, non-Western people at their service. Even today, as Sir Ivan and his Peace cape demonstrate, inserting oneself into such a narrative structure tends to produce little more than self-aggrandizing displays of white Western oblivion, arrogance, and ultimately, abuse.

However sincere Sir Ivan's philanthropic efforts may be, he does Africans (and other colonialized people) no favors with this portrayal of both them, and of himself in relation to them.

listen to racist music

I've blogged before about the anti-racist music that some white folks enjoy. However, I've yet to call attention to the blatantly racist music that a lot of other white folks enjoy.

Why, for instance, is the following song still in heavy rotation on "classic rock" radio stations and such?

Can you think of other songs that are popular despite their racist content?




As I write, this version of "Brown Sugar" (one of many others on YouTube) has been viewed 1,113,772 times.

(By the way, does the Rolling Stones' tribute to Angela Davis make up for it?)


Brown Sugar
(The Rolling Stones)

gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields,
sold in a market down in New Orleans.
Scarred old slaver know he's doin' all right.
Hear him whip the women just around midnight.

brown sugar
how come you taste so good
brown sugar
just like a young girl should


drums beating cold
English blood runs hot
lady of the house wondrin
where its gonna stop.
house boy knows that he's doin' all right.
you shoulda heard him just around midnight.


brown sugar
how come you taste so good
mmm, brown sugar
just like a young girl should

aw, get down on your knees
brown sugar
how come you dance so good?
aw, get down on the ground
brown sugar
just like a young girl should

I bet your mama was a tent-show queen,
and all her girlfriends
were sweet sixteen.
I'm no schoolboy but I know what I like,
You shoulda heard me just around midnight.

brown sugar
how come you taste so good
aw get down
brown sugar
just like a young girl should.

I said yeah, yeah, yeah,
how come you taste so good?
yeah, yeah, yeah.
just like a young girl should.

listen to tom waits

Tom Waits
"Christmas Card from
a Hooker in Minneapolis"

white weekend links

"Katrina's Hidden Race War" (A.C. Thompson @ The Nation)

Over the course of an eighteen-month investigation, I tracked down figures on all sides of the gunfire, speaking with the shooters of Algiers Point, gunshot survivors and those who witnessed the bloodshed. I interviewed police officers, forensic pathologists, firefighters, historians, medical doctors and private citizens, and studied more than 800 autopsies and piles of state death records. What emerged was a disturbing picture of New Orleans in the days after the storm, when the city fractured along racial fault lines as its government collapsed. . . . at least eleven people were shot. In each case the targets were African-American men, while the shooters, it appears, were all white.

The new information should reframe our understanding of the catastrophe. Immediately after the storm, the media portrayed African-Americans as looters and thugs--Mayor Ray Nagin, for example, told Oprah Winfrey that "hundreds of gang members" were marauding through the Superdome. Now it's clear that some of the most serious crimes committed during that time were the work of gun-toting white males. So far, their crimes have gone unpunished.



"The Sounds of the Sixties: How Dick Dale, the Doors, and Dylan Swayed to Arab Music" (Jonathan Curiel @ Alternet)

Listen to the Rolling Stones' "Paint It, Black," which bolted to the top of the U.S. charts in 1966, and you hear echoes of Arab music's quarter tones and minor keys. Listen to the 1967 Jefferson Airplane hit "White Rabbit" -- especially its intro, which climbs a scale of dissonant notes, and its lyrics, which mention a hookah -- and you hear Arabic music fused with psychedelic sensibilities. And listen to The Doors' "The End" or "Light My Fire," both from the group's self-titled 1967 debut album, and you hear the influence of Arabic music. Ray Manzarek, The Doors' keyboardist, tells me that his group's connection to Arabic music is no accident. The Doors' guitarist, Robby Krieger, was a flamenco guitarist before joining the band, and flamenco is based on centuries of Arab music, which infused Spain's culture during Muslim rule over the country. Also, says Manzarek, all four members of The Doors -- he, Krieger, Jim Morrison, and drummer John Densmore -- were interested in Latin music, which (like flamenco) has been touched by Arabic music.

Referring to Arab music, Manzarek says one of his regrets is that "I wish we had gotten in more of it [into The Doors' music]. You can't do everything. You just don't have time to do everything you want to do, dammit." . . . Later on in our conversation, he tells me I was the only observer in his 40 years of playing to ask him about The Doors' connection to Arab music.

(from Dan Piraro's BizarroBlog)

"Nazis in the military: 'I'm so proud of my kills" (David Neiwart @ Crooks and Liars)

Two years ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center ran a devastating report describing the infiltration of neo-Nazis into the ranks of the American military. The Pentagon's official response was steadfast denial of the problem.

The SPLC's David Holthouse just published a follow-up report, and found, predictably, that the problem is getting worse as the conflict in Iraq drags on:

A new FBI report confirms that white supremacists are infiltrating the military for several reasons. According to the unclassified FBI Intelligence Assessment, "White Supremacist Recruitment of Military Personnel Since 9/11," [PDF] which was released to law enforcement agencies nationwide: "Sensitive and reliable source reporting indicates supremacist leaders are encouraging followers who lack documented histories of neo-Nazi activity and overt racist insignia such as tattoos to infiltrate the military as 'ghost skins,' in order to recruit and receive training for the benefit of the extremist movement."

The source of the problem, as the report explained, was the extreme pressure military recruiters were under to fill their recruitment quotas. "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces," said Barfield, "and commanders don’t remove them . . . even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members."



"Structural racism and the Obama presidency" (John Powell @ Pamzuka News)

As we travel further into the 21st century, we are likely to see another kind of racialisation that will be informed by a different understanding of society and people.

So what does racialisation in the United States look like today? First, we are talking about a process that is too unsettled to define with exactitude, but one in which some contours are clear. We as a society are more socially conscious and racially egalitarian than at any time in our short history. However, this improvement in the societal position on race is not reflected in either our conscious attitudes or our inter-institutional practices and policies. Recognising this gap, scholars have pointed to a phenomenon called implicit bias. There is a growing body of work that documents that Americans have implicit, unconscious biases which can be tested. These attitudes can shift to be more salient in some situations rather than others. One cannot identify implicit racial bias by simply asking an interviewee, because the individual will not be aware of it. In spite of this, implicit attitudes can impact behaviour and choices. It is interesting to note that implicit bias is a social phenomenon reflecting the collective social culture. This means that even non-whites are likely to carry some level of implicit bias, but generally not to the same extent as whites.

"Black College Students Get Better Grades with White Roommate" (Ohio State University Research News)

A new study of college freshman suggests that African Americans may obtain higher grades if they live with a white roommate. A detailed study of students at a large, predominantly-white university revealed that while living with a white roommate may be more challenging than living with someone of the same race, many Black students appear to benefit from the experience.

For African American students, this could translate into as much as 0.30-point increase in their GPA in their first quarter of college. White students, on the other hand, were affected more by the academic ability of their roommate than by their race. . . .

The findings suggest that the interaction between a white and an African American student may help orient these minority students to a predominantly white university, Shook said. By living with their white counterparts, the African American students are finding someone with whom they can study and learn from in ways other African American students cannot offer.



"Certificate of Whiteness" (profacero @ Professor Zero)

The son of a doctor employed on a sugar plantation, nineteenth century Cuban writer Cirilo Villaverde had to present a “certificate of whiteness” to enroll in school. These certificates were ostensibly proofs of lineage and purity of blood. They could also be obtained, as José Piedra reminds us, through a demonstration of literacy in Latin and Spanish, and of cultural allegiance to the Western world.

Now Barack Obama, for whom people did not want to vote because he was Black, has won the election--and people are saying he is not Black. They are even saying he is white. It appears to me they are awarding him a certificate of whiteness. . . .

Since the 1920s at least, people have been saying that mixture will create a bridge between the races and ultimately eliminate racism. I think the underlying assumption here is that race is a biological category. People appear to believe difference must be abolished so that racist attitudes can be abolished. Thus racism is naturalized. People think it is caused by the fact that people look different from one another and not by ideological factors.

"Coming Clean in the Inner City" (Christoper Hawthorne @ Los Angeles Times)

"In this neighborhood the most radical thing you could do was make a white building," architect Michael Maltzan told me on a recent afternoon as we toured the campus of Inner-City Arts, where his firm completed an $8.5-million expansion earlier this fall.

The ICA complex -- which indeed has the surprising brightness of a soap-opera actor's teeth seen up close, or the pages deep inside a newspaper that has yellowed on top -- offers classes in the arts to students bused in from a number of public-school campuses. Its 1-acre site, at 7th and Kohler streets near the edge of downtown's skid row, is surrounded by seafood and produce wholesalers, social service agencies, single-room-occupancy hotels and auto-parts shops. Bunker Hill's gleaming, mirrored-glass towers loom quite visibly to the northwest, but at ground level these blocks are dominated by roll-down security doors and loops of razor wire.

In that context, ICA's decision to paint its entire campus white is part provocation, part stubborn declaration of hope. The color is also an expression of commitment to several varieties of upkeep, a choice that says to the neighborhood: The buildings may get scuffed, or attract graffiti, but we will be here to keep them clean, and that cleanliness will suggest the steadfastness of what is going on inside. Whiteness equals constancy, and the brighter the better.



And finally, further encouragement for white people trying to get out of their socially constructed shells of corporeal inhibition. Don't just dance--sing!

listen to anti-racist music

Heard any good songs with good messages lately?

Living Colour, "Funny Vibe" (1989)
(audio of a better version here)

white weekend links

"Holocaust Denial, American Style" (Tim Wise @ Red Room)

Recently, after a presentation to teachers about racial bias in high school curricula, I got into a tiny spat with an instructor who objected to my using the word "holocaust" to describe the process by which nearly 99% of indigenous Americans perished from the 1400s to the present day. He also objected to the use of the term to describe the experience of Africans, forcibly kidnapped and enslaved throughout the hemisphere. . . .

Open and deliberate calls for mass murder and destruction of entire Indian peoples were common. So, for instance, during the laying of the Northern Pacific Railroad through the Montana territory, the area's chief of Indian affairs noted that if the Sioux (Lakota and Dakota) peoples continued to "molest" the laying of the track and the progress symbolized by it, a military force should be sent to punish them "even to annihilation." In other words, that widespread death of indigenous peoples was the desired (thus intended) outcome of conquest is hard to deny.


"Hate Incidents in U.S. Surge, Election Seen as Factor behind Revival of Klan" (Howard Witt @ Chicago Tribune)

Barely three weeks after Americans elected their first black president amid a wave of interracial good feeling, a spasm of noose hangings, racist graffiti, vandalism and death threats is convulsing dozens of towns across the country as white extremists lash out at the new political order.

More than 200 hate-related incidents, including cross-burnings, assassination betting pools and effigies of President-elect Barack Obama, have been reported so far, according to law-enforcement authorities and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups. Racist Web sites are boasting that their servers are crashing under the weight of exponential increases in page views.

Even more ominously, America's most potent symbol of racial hatred—the Ku Klux Klan—has begun to reassert itself, emerging from decades of disorganization and obscurity in a spate of recent violence.


"What Would Malcolm Say?" (Changeseeker @ Why Am I Not Surprised?)

Though a cadre of disgruntled racists have reared their ugly heads in response to the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, many in this country – Black and White – have touted the election as a symbol of change, as proof positive that, at least in very important ways, race no longer matters here. I would argue, however, that this perspective is not only badly mistaken, but will be used to further entrench and intensify institutionalized oppression against ordinary people of color in the U.S., and most particularly African-Americans. Wholesale denial of the real problems I have discussed in this post will now be masked by a ready appropriation of this one man’s remarkable achievement to mean that, if a Black man can be elected President, then there are no differences between us. Thus racism will morph into yet another incarnation of neo-racism so that, even with a Black President in the White House, we can continue to face the world as a nation marked by its refusal to honor the Constitutionally-guaranteed rights of millions of its citizens.


"Multiracial families see Barack Obama as 'Other' like them" (Don Terry @ Los Angeles Times)

For the parents of multiracial children, Obama's rise has been a vindication of sorts, a presidential rebuttal to a society that has not always been kind to their offspring, labeling them "half-breeds," "tragic mulattoes," "mutts," "mixed nuts," according to Susan Graham, the white mother of two multiracial children and the founder of the California-based Project Race, a 17-year-old nationwide group that advocates for a multiracial classification on all school, employment, census and other forms.

"Our membership has grown since the election," Graham said. "We've been fighting for a long time. This is a great boost for us." . . .

Race, however, continues to be a stubborn puzzle. It wasn't until 2000 that Americans were allowed to check more than one box for race on U.S. census forms. At that time, about 6.83 million people, or 2.4%, checked two or more races on census forms out of a population of about 281 million.

Carolyn Liebler, a sociology professor specializing in family, race and ethnicity at the University of Minnesota, said she expected that the numbers of people identifying as multiracial would be higher in 2010 than they were in 2000 "because the number of mixed-raced marriages are going up" and because of Obama.


"Black Kids in White Houses" (Jen Graves @ The Stranger)

It would be easier for white people if race did not exist. Or if everyone could agree that race did not matter, that is. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "transracial" first appeared publicly in a 1971 Time magazine article. The article introduced transracial adoption, or adoption across racial boundaries—most often white parents adopting children of color—and reported a strange phenomenon. According to a study in Britain, some white parents "tended to 'deny their child's color, or to say he was growing lighter, or that other people thought he was suntanned and did not recognize him as colored. Sometimes the reality was fully accepted [by the parents] only after the very light child had grown noticeably darker after being exposed to bright sunlight on holiday.'"

It's such an outrageous finding that it sounds like a joke. Stephen Colbert's dimwitted white-guy alter ego has a joke like this, when he says on The Colbert Report, always in the most ridiculous of situations: "As you know, I don't see color." The joke is funny because in so many ways it's true. Plenty of white people don't see color. We refuse to look at it, prefer not to see too much difference, because difference almost always makes us feel bad by comparison.

Transracial adoption is awkward to discuss at first, because although it is designed to chart a radically integrated future, on the surface its structure repeats the segregated past. Just look at the basic structure of a family and apply race to the equation. The most crude way to put it: Whites are in charge, children of color are subordinate, and adults of color are out of the picture.


"Carleton cancels Shinerama; says disease only affects 'white people'" (Karen Pinchin @ macleans.ca oncampus)

Carleton University Students’ Association is cancelling Shinerama, the school’s popular fundraiser for cystic fibrosis, after the council said the fatal disease is not “inclusive” enough.

The motion, which passed 17 to 2 at the association’s Nov. 24 meeting, read: “Whereas Cystic fibrosis has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men…Be it resolved that: CUSA discontinue its support of this campaign.” . . .

Shinerama fundraising takes place during orientation week and has been happening at Carleton University for nearly 25 years. As a result, the school has raised almost $1 million for the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.Only one day after the controversial vote, hundreds of Carleton students have flocked online to protest the cancellation of an event they say is incredibly important to the charitable life of the school.

"The Whitest Kids You Know: Bishop Allen at the Music Hall" (Jamie Peck @ New York Press)

Last Saturday, Bishop Allen filled the Music Hall of Williamsburg with signs of the times. Perhaps due to the band's inclusion on the soundtrack of mainstream indie Michael Cera cute-fest Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, the show attracted an unusually large share of regs for the neighborhood; turtlenecks and business casual attire were on full display and guys clutched their brittle girlfriends in anticipation of the passionate night of missionary sex they’d earned with dinner at Sea, followed by an “edgy” indie rock show in the hip, up-and-coming neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I never thought I’d say this about anyone, but Bishop Allen makes Vampire Weekend look like N.W.A.

As the band threw itself into a long set of jangly pop songs, I recalled a review of Juno that posits the film as operatic performance of a certain brand of neo-urban whiteness: Think stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. Never straying from the tonal range of a children’s song, leading man Justin Rice kept a straight face while delivering lyrics like “take another picture with your ca-ca-ca-ca-camera” (if it sounds like a commercial, it’s because it is one) and multiple choruses consisting largely of “da-da-da-da” or “la-la-la-la.” Rice did an awkward sideways hop when he got excited, and when he got really excited, something resembling Irish step dancing. The audience responded by “wooing” and bouncing around without moving their hips one iota.

What do you think?
Aside from the preponderance of white people,
what's "white" about this band,
its music, and/or this video?

"Click, Click, Click, Click"
by Bishop Allen

suffer from a privilege-induced lack of coping skills

Here's some theme music for this post:



Has Black Friday arrived in America? If so, are you prepared?

Actually, if you're a "white" American, there's a good chance that you're less prepared than other Americans. Emotionally that, is. And mentally. Maybe even physically.

As is so often the case, Tim Wise has explained well this common symptom of learning to be white:

Racism and white privilege/supremacy generates a mindset of entitlement among those in the dominant group. This entitlement mentality can prove dangerous, whenever the expectations of a member of the group are frustrated. Principally this is because such persons develop very weak coping skills as a result of never having to overcome the obstacles that oppressed folks deal with every day and MUST conquer in order to survive.

So, as a result, it is the privileged (the beneficiaries of racism, and also, it should be pointed out, the class system) who are ill-prepared for setback: the loss of a job, stocks taking a nose-dive (who were the folks jumping out the windows in the great depression–not poor folks and folks of color, but rich whites who couldn’t handle being broke!) Likewise, if you look at the various personal pathologies that tend to be disproportionate in the white community (and upper middle class for that matter), they are interesting in that they all are about control–controlling one’s anxiety, emotional pain, or controlling and dominating others–like suicide, substance abuse, eating disorders, self-injury/mutilation, serial killing and mass murder (as opposed to just regular one-on-one homicide), sexual sadism killings, etc.

Not knowing how the world works is dangerous. White privilege and racism allow the dominant group to live in a bubble of unreality. Most days that’s no big deal I suppose. But every now and then reality intrudes on you and if you haven’t been expecting it, the trauma is magnified. So, when 9/11 happened, millions of whites were running around saying “why do they hate us?” because whites have never had to see our nation the way others do–we’ve been able to live in la-la land.

But folks of color didn’t say this, because those without privilege HAVE to know what others think about them. Not to do so is to be in perpetual danger. So whites flipped out, and by virtue of being unprepared, pushed for a policy response (war) that folks of color were HIGHLY skeptical of from the beginning. But whites, enthralled by our sense of righteousness (itself a manifestation of privilege), pushed forward, convinced that the war in Iraq would go swimmingly. How’s that working out?

In other words, racism and privilege generate mentalities and policies that are dysfunctional, even deadly for whites as with folks of color. Folks of color are the first victims, to be sure, and the worst. But as someone else said, what goes around. . .

Privilege creates a false sense of security. Being the dominant group can set you up for a fall, can prevent you from building up the coping skills needed to deal with setback, because so often those skills are ones you just don't need.

Until you do, that is.

[This quotation is adapted from two sources: a comment Tim Wise wrote at Resist Racism, and one of his books, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son. Lyrics for Steely Dan's song "Black Friday"]

travel to exotic locations, meet interesting people, and eat them

"On a search for new musical inspiration,
David Byrne unexpectedly runs into Paul Simon"
Drew Friedman for Spy Magazine,
sometime in the mid-1990s

I'm going to take a break, so for a couple of weeks I'll be posting lightly, if at all. I'm leaving today for some "white world-traveling"--if an American white guy visiting his American family members and fishing with his American father counts as world-traveling. I think it does, given how my whiteness has helped to instill in me a presumptuous sense that I have the right to go wherever I like. I'll try to think about who used to fish in the rivers and lakes that I'll be dropping lines in, and I may even try to discover who they were, and where they went, and what "white" people did to them. But as a white American, I certainly won't have to do that, and as far as I know, nothing and no one around me will be encouraging me to do that.

I might write about the whiteness of my trip when I return--I'm sure it'll be there, in many manifestations and guises, wherever I go. I'll leave you for now with some other thoughts, on another sort of white world-traveling.

In the mid-nineties, one of my favorite movies was Latcho Drom (which I've seen translated as Safe Journey), released in 1993 by Romani/Algerian filmmaker Tony Gatlif. I didn't know back then that the people the film is about, the people I thought of then as "gypsies," are more properly called the Roma, or the Romani people.

At the time, this is what I'd gathered about "gypsies," never having met any: that they mostly live in Europe, where non-"gypsies" typically despised them; that the Nazis included them in the Holocaust; that they're a nomadic people who earn a living by entertaining non-nomadic people, and maybe by pilfering from them too; and that when Americans say they got "gypped" by paying too much for something, they're using a racist slur (even back then, I did call people on their use of that slur, as I also did when I heard someone happily report that they'd managed to "Jew down" the price of a rummage-sale item, or a used car).

So I thought I was a racially and globally conscious white person, and I thought that buying, and thus supporting, what came to be known as "world music" was another good thing to do. I bought and listened to music by Youssou N'Dour, Ali Farka Toure, Lhasa, the Gipsy Kings, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and by western musicians who appropriated "world" influences, such as David Byrne, Paul Simon, Kate Bush, and Peter Gabriel.

I realize now that I was, as cultural critic bell hooks puts it, "eating the other." I was consuming a product geared towards people like me, first-world "consumers" who wanted some sort of connection to other places and especially to other peoples, a connection that we thought we could make with our money.

Music conveys to us a lot more than sound and feeling. As we listen, we add our own associations, plugging the music into them and reacting to whatever cultural, social, economic, national, and racial connotations it stirs up for us. It's a form of socially induced pattern recognition that takes place on an individual level. As a rather typical white American, I vaguely felt like something was missing from my life, something that would make me more alive, less . . . stifled. Listening to music from other cultures, and also watching "foreign films," seemed to assuage, to some degree, that twinge of vague emptiness.

The film Latcho Drom seemed especially fulfilling, because it was a foreign film full of world music. It's a documentary of sorts about the Roma, though "documentary" seems like the wrong term for it. Latcho Drom consists of unnarrated, richly textured and colored vignettes, like the two excerpts below. The camera follows different bands or groups of Roma, who always seem to be on the move, constantly singing and dancing as they go.

As I watch the film now, I notice that the documentary "subjects," the movie's Romani people, rarely if ever "break the fourth wall," by looking directly at the camera. I now realize that someone probably told them not to do that, and I also wonder just how staged the whole thing is. Actually, it's very staged--though perhaps no less wonderful for that. When I watched it several times in the mid-nineties (having of course bought a copy, so that I could better "consume" these "others"), I thought it was incredibly real. The people seemed so alive to me, and in many ways, so free. I hadn't noticed at all how carefully made this movie is, how meticulously arranged, choreographed, edited, and perhaps even "acted" it all is.

Paying attention to the subtitled lyrics reveals that an effort has been made to tell Romani history gradually throughout the film. In the second clip below, which closes the film (with, I now see, a very traditional cinematic closing, the gradually distancing "long shot"), a woman's song provides a defiant list of specific charges against non-Romani Europeans. But as I watched it repeatedly back in the nineties, all such details about real "gypsies" didn't mean much to me. I liked the music, and the passion, and the looks of the people and their clothing, and especially how alive they all seemed.

I wasn't consciously thinking about how much more alive they seemed than me, and the other, mostly white American people around me. But I now realize, that's what I was doing. I was watching and listening to something that was more about me, and what I felt I was missing, than it was about "them," and what their lives were and are really like. I thought I was encountering something new and authentic, and maybe to some degree I was. Mostly, though, I was reinforcing notions of foreign others that I already had, and I was also reaching out for something that I thought I didn't have. Something that I felt I lacked.

What bell hooks has written about such interactions, in her essay "Eating the Other," was so true of the "me" that I was back then. And given not only my whiteness, but also my nationality, my masculinity, my relatively stable financial means, and more, her point is probably still true of me, though to, I hope, a lesser degree:

The desire to make contact with those bodies deemed Other, with no apparent will to dominate, assuages the guilt of the past, and even takes the form of a defiant gesture where one denies accountability and historical connection. Most importantly, it establishes a contemporary narrative where the suffering imposed by structures of domination on those designated Other is deflected by an emphasis on seduction and longing where the desire is not to make the Other over in one’s image but to become the Other.






[hat-tip: Ortho @ Baudrillard's Bastard; I'd also like to note that to their credit, some cultural appropriators have gone to great lengths to be more true to the people from whom they borrow, or steal--David Byrne, for instance, who "hates" the marketing category of "world music": "It’s a none too subtle way of reasserting the hegemony of Western pop culture. It ghettoizes most of the world’s music. A bold and audacious move, White Man!."]

listen to anti-racist music

It's naive to think a few well intended musicians can do something about a problem so widespread and endemic.

--The Spectator's Toby Young
on fighting racism with music

From The Clash to Bob Dylan, from Bob Marley to U2, from NOFX to Saul Williams to Nas, and from many others to many others--a lot of music with an anti-racist message gets listened to by a lot of white people. But it seems that few of these white people--white Americans, at least--ever get inspired by that kind of music to go out and actually DO anything against racism.

Is music a viable venue for fighting racism? Is Toby Young's cynicism about fighting racism with music justified, or do some musical efforts of this sort result in a reduction of racism and/or white supremacy?

Two songs toward further cerebral stimulation on this matter:

Johnny Cash
"White Girl"
(lyrics)




Billy Bragg
(channeling Woody Guthrie)
"All You Fascists"
(lyrics)