Episode 48 — Cultural Appropriation

[admin 330]

Andrew Ti and guest Joe Mande give their takes on cultural appropriation. They talk about white girls wearing headdresses, people celebrating other cultures, and explore the idea of Joe Mande’s Little New York restaurant. As always, call us at (323) 389-RACE to ask us if anything is racist.

[president cage 13]

What's up with you constantly dissing the Blues? Seems kinda racist to me. Then again, anyone who does 48 episodes of a podcast about racism and has yet to have an African American guest is suspect.

[president cage 13]

It would be great if you could get Paul Mooney on and we could find out what he thinks of Jon Daly's "Bill Cosby Bukowski" character, or PF Tompkins' impression of Ice-T or of comedy rappers like Dragon Boy Suede. But I'm sure it's easier to get white writers from "Don't Trust the B" or wherever who "only listen to hip hop."

[wo 265]

Yo, is Paul Mooney racist?

[Todd Mason 21]

Cultural appropriation or cultural osmosis...or, is it racist for non-African-American folks to appropriate such turns of phrase as "Yo!" (though all ethnicities in the military 60 years ago were likely to say this, aside from people saying "I" or "me" in Spanish) or "jack my shit"? Or is it just inevitable, as apparently is the pointless and not terribly well-informed hostility to blues music on this podcast...check out some of the artists cited here sometime: http://www.livingblues.com/index.php/inside-living-blues/cd-reviews.html ...

 

But, well, yes, playing dress up in feathered headresses is pretty sad. http://newstalgia.crooksandliars.com/gordonskene/newstalgia-reference-room-governor-cal

[Podus 108]

Paul Mooney is racist as fuck.

[Nintendo_Jones 3]

I don't think he necessarily thinks that the blues are wack, just there's some wack stuff going on with it and white people. Most of the famous blues musicians of the last 50 years are white guys and it's also something that white people will point to as something that proves they aren't racist. They'll cite the blues like they might cite a black friend. Or it'll be something where they'll be like "I don't like rap, but I do like real music like the blues." It's not racist in every case, obviously. Just sometimes there is an n-wordy undercurrent.

[president cage 13]

Sure there are some corny white guys playing the Blues (though there are a ton of well-known black Blues musicians from the past 50 years too: Robert Cray, Keb Mo, Buddy Guy, RL Burnside, etc.) and who probably have elitist attitudes about it. But there are also people who think there hasn't been a good rap record released since 1998, or a good Country song since 1968. People have elitist musical attitudes that have little to do with race.

 

But the host of this podcast in an earlier show said something like "Black people have come up with much better kinds of music than the Blues" which seems to denigrate all of the great black Blues musicians of the past.

[Todd Mason 21]

http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2012/09/saturday-music-club-muddying-waters.html