Thanks for coming back to this, because I did skip past it the first time. These clips combine 3 things I've been thinking about over the last few days: Hollywood, the Old West, and the question of white culture.
There's been some talk about the racist history of police vis-a-vis protection of wealth, but I think in the imaginations of America, the policeman's heritage is that of the Wild West, or at least Hollywood's version of it: a literal savior who arrives to bring order to an otherwise lawless place. Sure, they usually end up in town because a bank or a train keeps getting robbed, but their noble quest also chases off the murdering thieves from the nearby ranch, secures the purity of the rancher's daughter, guards the young men from the ruthless natives, and turns the town into a peaceful Eden for all who remain. Why else would Chuck D equate John Wayne with the power if not because he lives in our minds as a proto-policeman?
The other part of the conversation that grabbed me was the brief implication in the video that white people have no ethnicity, no culture (outside of pockets of preserved Old World culture, let's assume). Part of that is the thing in white supremacy that centers whiteness so much that it's the default culture, the proverbial "what's water to a fish?" But The Wild West and the white male archetype have a role here too. I think the great contemporary stand-in for that figure is Jon Hamm in Mad Men. Don Draper is essentially a metaphor for America (and by extension consumerism), right? A man of no means who becomes untethered from his shameful past and who, through stolen valor, and lies, and relying on people who know they're lies but don't care, invents an identity that carries no history, no heritage, no meaning, is only of the present. I've felt that, to some degree -- my family has no 'heritage.' I'm not in touch with any cultural touchstones, any genealogy, any family tree. I don't know where I "come from," or who my people are. So how can I know who *I* am? I am no one except me, an American, and I carry no burden of any ethnic culture with me.
Except that's not true, is it? I'm white. And that may not mean anything in terms of my heritage from the Old World, but it's everything in the New one.
That's a swirl of thoughts and I'm still struggling to make them coherent, so I apologize if they aren't to any of you, either.
There's a lot to unpack here and I've been having a lot of conversations about this, so I might get a little exhausted. I apologize ahead of time. I'm going to try to get through some of this, though. I do have a view on everything you've just said.
I interviewed a painter once that was very ethnically focused with her art. She had a pride that I never did and it was something amazing to take in, because where her culture expanded her with her Mexican identity, my ethnicity was always something that I was taught limited me, or othered me. I had to prove that I was MORE beyond my appearance, not that my culture and appearance added to my identity. It only stole from it. I needed to find a way to connect to that more and I still do. Being mixed race has given me hardcore imposter syndrome throughout my life. It wasn't until recent years that I began to view being mixed race as an experience all it's own. It's an incredibly important issue to discuss, but I can get more into that later, because, otherwise, this comment will never end. But, the point is that, when your culture excludes you in a society, you are encouraged to abandon it. If you don't, it will be beaten out of you in one way or another.
You have to be the Huxtables to be accepted. You have to literally show people, "Hey. They're just like us" by adapting to become as much like them as possible. Those are the "good ones" the people who assimilate to you. A lot of white people will view a black or brown person in a dress shirt or at their place of business as evidence of "good" examples of minorities. They aren't gang members. To them, that's becoming open minded and woke. "I know they aren't all bad, because Jamal or Jorge at work are just like us." And by "like us" that's not about human, but assimilated. They don't wear sagging pants and they don't have khakis and hair nets. The inherent issue there is that they are still able to create those two compartments and divide things in a way where Looks Like Me = GOOD and Doesn't Look Like Me = BAD. They can't look at those other examples and simply not assume anything. They can't see that humanity. Another level to that is the fear/shame/risk of selling yourself and your own community out to where you risk losing that space with it/them, as well. That's where code switching comes in.
This is a bit of an aside, but I just watched this TED TALK by Lee Mun Wah, the director who made The Color Of Fear and he speaks about racism and how it has affected his life. He began to hide his food and other aspects that represented his culture as a kid, because it became evident that it was an obstacle. It's worth adding to the pile of materials that we already have going on in here. It's not my main point here, but there's a lot here and it's worth checking out at some point, so I'm just going to post it. The next part after this video is more relevant to what I'm really trying to get at. I guess this is too, but... I don't know. The next part was my intention.
One thing addressed in these color of fear videos is the idea of pillaging other cultures for artifacts. It's about taking for yourselves; not respecting the source, but often inspecting it like an autopsy. I just got into that over in the VMP exclusives thread. There is zero acknowledgment of hip hop and where it came from, how it was anti-violence and about people being brought together. These days, a lot of people -- some, even around here, it seems -- just want to listen to a beat. The pain that birthed that music doesn't matter. They don't want to hear it, unless there's a beat under it.
Here's a fascinating and relevant example of that for me that directly relates to the idea of John Wayne. One Be Lo made this post a little while back about how someone tried to mix John Wayne with his music
Lo seemed to see some validity in what I interpreted from it, because he responded to my comment with KABOOM!!! You could scroll through to find it on IG, but here's what I said
"To me, this just sounds like the internet age, straight up. The mentality itself isn't new, just the format and platforms. This dude felt like he made something and he can't take criticism. Someone he knows probably even told him it was dope. The act of using a program to put sound on video was the extent of the "art," like taking a painting & photoshopping impact font on it. It's their bad suburban graffitti.
I've asked people to credit work that wasn't theirs before and they are willing to battle like crazy to avoid doing that. They want likes. They want acknowledgement & are perfectly content getting it unwarrantedly from other people's work. If there's one thing people will defend with everything they have it's their identity and ideas of themselves. If they haven't cultivated or discovered a real personality or identity, they hold onto what they believe they do have, even when that's the actual barrier holding them back. They don't want that jostled.
I mean, if he's claiming there's no greater meaning or thought to what he did than sticking 2 things together, the biggest thing he did was block out and avoid introspection. He's chasing flashes of color. He even told you that, to him, the song is the beat. The rhythm. The film is just the action. The violence. He's not questioning where his visceral reactions come from. The source doesn't matter to him. The why is insignificant. You aren't into it, because that film and imagery is racist. This cat doesn't want to explore why he reacts positively to it, but rejects why you react less than positively to it. Taking your work like that is a form of speaking for you & I'd assume that messaging you is a way to ask if he was on point with it. He didn't like the answer.
I don't know man, but this is kind of fascinating & I really appreciate you sharing it. We love you for your craft and lyricism and integrity. This dude hears you like a top 40 jam. You even inject your IG with more depth & dimension when you address stuff like this. Plus that verse is bananas. As for Russia & freedom of speech, I'd wager that Pussy Riot would disagree with that dude."
So... basically, it's about identity. It's about how we want to be seen, or how much humanity we might be willing to afford those who we take from and how much responsibility we may want to hold or recognize while doing that.
I seriously have about 30 different things I can get into here, but I want to offer one exercise that I've "created" and done with my son, lately. He is essentially white and needs to learn some hard truths because of that -- or, mostly, because of the fact that he looks like a white male, so society will let him benefit from those hard truths while ignoring them.
it's in the comment below