From: isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell)
Newsgroups: alt.rap
Subject: Re: WHITE MEN...(was //DJ PHYZ FOR PRES.)
Date: 7 Apr 92 22:09:04 GMT
	<1992Apr7.183018.8227@Princeton.EDU>
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
In-reply-to: gvbattle@tome.Princeton.EDU's message of 7 Apr 92 18:30:18 GMT

gvbattle@tome.Princeton.EDU (Gregory V. Battle) writes:
|In article <1992Apr7.120323.2361@etek.chalmers.se> superfly@etek.chalmers.se  
|(Palle Zetterstrand) writes:
|> In article  <Udr6DSS00WBN01I3Jk@andrew.cmu.edu> DCAL(Dean Calloway):
|> >1. What do you think of all the white people who subscribe to this board
|> >and imitate what they feel is "black talk," having never grown up in
|> >anyone's hood? (You all seem to hate V.Ice... why don't you resent these
|> >seem clowns who make a parody of the black experience... "cartoonizing"
|> >us through what they see and hear on TV and the radio (and not all white
|> >people, just those in this group who do this... I happen to know that
|> >there are several)
|>It' s just that this is the way the cool black rappers sound 
|>like and of course I want to be like them.
|>                                         -Palle Zetterstrand
|Although Palle's comment is disturbingly humorous, especially when you take
|into account DCAL's post, I have to ask both of you a question.  What do you
|think of say Kathleen Battle <a black opera singer of no relation to me, I  
|think>or any other black performer that excels in a white artform.  Are these
|blacks "cartoonizing" white culture by excelling in a white craft,or are they
|just doing what "cool white opera singers" do/sound-like/act-like?  Or how  
|about Paul Simon and the whole Graceland thing <don't get me started on this  
|:)>?  

The key problem in all this is that we have a history of cultural rape
which colors (so to speak) our perceptions.

|Personally, I feel that that cultural property, when made public, can be 
|appropriated by anyone who cares to embrace it.  Mimicing what one's "heroes"
|is not a bad thing at all, when done in respect for those "heroes." 

<insert prop here>  <--clearly the coolest thing ever invented, sorry
                       for stealing it so much

Word!  Orange Juice Concentrate!

|The problem  
|is drawing the line between respect and insult withing the use of alternate  
|cultural property.

Wherein lies the problem, as I said above.

And, of course, we must accept the fact that it really is pitiful to
see someone *try* to be in when they so clearly are not.  Or as I
always say:  people who try to be cool are not.  You can't *try* to be
cool or in because being cool or being in requires being able to do it
without trying.  It's inherently uncool (out) to try to be cool.
(Have I said that enough, yet?).

And worse, when those that are in have decided that you're trying too
hard, you get pimp slapped (figuratively).  This is true of parents
and their kids, culture z with cultural q, me and you and the smurfs.

On the other hand, this does not mean that those once outside (the
culture, in this case) cannot move in.


--
Peace.
                     "There is a level of cowardice lower than that 
                      of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist."
                                               - Ayn Rand
                           ------
Don't just adopt opinions |  \/  | I am Charles Isbell, Homeboy from hell,
      develop them.       |  /\  | living axiom and anonymous absolute ruler
                           ------  of the cosmos.