A revelatory, well-argued work of cultural criticism.
A literary scholar examines the many ways in which African American influences are incorporated, without acknowledgment or thanks, into the white cultural mainstream.
Cultural appropriation, writes Jackson (English and African American Studies/Northwestern Univ.), “gets a bad rap.” Rap, for instance, borrows from the styles of earlier generations—soul, disco, funk, even gospel—but includes the likes of Billy Joel and Paul Simon in its DNA. Appropriation, she writes, “is everywhere, and it is inevitable,” though it is also a matter of power as much as artistic license: The culturally dominant group gets away with borrowing fashions, musical styles, and language, developing “black aesthetics without black people.” In a lucid explication of the work of appropriation in music, she examines borrowings not just by white artists such as Britney Spears, but also members of minority populations such as Jennifer Lopez, who, by Jackson’s account, lifted liberally from a less-known artist named Ashanti. It’s Lopez’s good luck that the borrowing, including the passing insertion of the N-word, took place in a time when “the internet wasn’t then what the internet is now, and time forgives all slurs.” Pop star Pink took a different course, gradually shedding any blackness in her sound, even as Miley Cyrus dropped her white-pop teen persona to embrace the hip-hop world and Khloé Kardashian did her hair up in cornrows and called herself a “Bantu babe.” The author ranges across a broad field of reference, writing of the appropriation of the Southern-ism “chile” (child, that is) by means of the TV show Real Housewives of Atlanta and the culinary borrowings of Paula Deen, “white Mammy, plumping America one fried delicacy at a time,” who got in trouble not for her lifting recipes but instead for using the N-word. Jackson is evenhanded throughout, though there’s a welcome fire to her discussion, as when she writes, “America is addicted to hurting black people. America is addicted to watching itself hurt black people."
A revelatory, well-argued work of cultural criticism.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1180-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
W.E.B. Du Bois lived nearly a century, from 1868 to 1963. It was a century of radical transformation in the status of blacks in the US, and Du Bois himself was at the forefront of the struggle for equality. But the trajectory of his life and thought was uniquely his own. Here Lewis, author of W.E.B. Du Bois (1993), collects scores of essays, articles, and poems that show a lucid, moral, incisive, passionate, and at times prescient mind at work. In his 1890 Harvard commencement address, Du Bois decries Jefferson Davis as a representative of Teutonic civilization, which ``champion[s] the idea of Personal Assertion'' and ``tends...towards Despotism.'' With a finely honed sensitivity to all forms of racism and sexism, in 1915 he advocates women's suffrage; and as early as 1936, he writes that Germany is waging ``world war on Jews.'' In 1906, at the Niagara Movement meeting, he says, ``We do not believe in violence.'' But by 1957, now on the path to communism, Du Bois castigates Martin Luther King: ``So long as a people insults, murders, and hates by hereditary teaching, non-violence can bring no peace.'' An indispensable—and remarkably relevant—assemblage of writings.
Pub Date: Jan. 2, 1995
ISBN: 0-8050-3264-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
Badger (American Studies/Univ. of Alabama) restores an important, forgotten chapter in African-American musical history. Europe was one of the pioneering composers, bandleaders, and musical factotums in turn-of-the-century America. Raised in Washington, D.C., he was exposed to a rich musical life in church, home, and public concerts. Around 1903, he left the capital for New York City (where his older brother was established as a theatrical pianist) and was soon working as a bandleader, arranger, and composer. Europe was a born organizer, helping to found a black theatrical fraternity known humorously as ``The Frogs'' and then, in 1910, the famous Clef Club, the first union of African-American musicians. In 1914, he joined forces with Vernon and Irene Castle, who were just beginning to perform the new black-influenced dances for high society. He introduced them to W.C. Handy's ``Memphis Blues,'' suggesting they create a new dance to accompany its changing meters; the result was the fox-trot, the popular dance team's most enduring legacy. During WW I, Europe was a machine- gunner with the 369th Regiment, an all-black company that fought as part of the French army (because the Americans feared integrating their ranks). Ironically, after surviving front-line duty, Europe was knifed by a disgruntled band member in 1919; he died at age 39. Europe, like Handy, his near-contemporary, hoped to mold a black concert music, drawing on 19th-century European roots, that would ``uplift his race.'' Although elements of ragtime and jazz crept into his music, he favored the sentimental parlor style of playing and singing that was the rage in late Victorian days. His musical legacy has been more or less forgotten, although without his pioneering work the success of Paul Whiteman's orchestra in the 1920s (and Duke Ellington's in the '30s) surely couldn't have occurred. Will appeal to fans of early jazz, African-American history, and 20th-century culture. (30 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-506044-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
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