As happens at many conferences, much of the time set aside for dialogue between featured participants and the audience dissipated as moderators tried to adhere to the conference's chock-full schedule. That melding of the two cultures continues today, the editors said, as evidenced by Asian and Asian American youths' fascination with hip-hop music and with African American pro basketball players sporting Asian characters in their tattoos. He argued against the view that in order for black art to be authentically black, it must be by, for and about black people. Just as hyperblackness fails to eliminate the racial disparities that it sets out to address, so does the use of black music and other artistic forms in commercial culture. At an emotional level, imitation is not a form of flattery, of reverence or respect. . . .
Mimicry is a way in which aggression can be expressed.
Rhodessa Jones, a dancer and performance artist who works with incarcerated women, said she began that work when she was asked to teach aerobics classes to women in the San Francisco city jail. I'm not an aerobics teacher. When I arrived, I was amazed that there were so many African American women in jail, and I realized that aerobics wasn't going to cut it. That experience evolved into what is now known as the Medea Project, a theater for incarcerated women that Jones founded. While Jones said emphatically that artists must work to improve the lives of those who are falling through society's cracks, she noted that all performers want to have the freedom simply to express themselves as artists.