Such a claim may be a natural outgrowth of the hoary old assumption among a different kind of racist that only black folks have troubles. If that were so, the audience for the blues would be an exclusive club. But white folks, too, go ummm hmmm when they listen transfixed by Muddy Waters or B.B. King or Rufus Thomas or Stevie Ray Vaughan or, yes, Bonnie Raitt. What a question. Anybody's who's ever had 'em and had 'em bad knows that ain't good.
Nobody owns 'em.
Sophocles knew it when he wrote the lines for those Greek choruses, who were singin' the blues even if they called it catharsis. They speak to the human condition. The blues are life, or at least an unavoidable part of it, and they get us through it. The blues aren't about rising above things, but going through them. If You Can Stand the Pull.