Perhaps many African American viewers have developed some sort of pop-cultural Stockholm Syndrome: having subsisted on a force-fed diet of coon images for such a long period, they have come to enjoy the taste. They certainly have not come to think critically about the subject. [...] . In the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Goldstein argued: "Thanks to the enormous influence of hip-hop music, a generation of young white teenagers has become as colorblind about movies as they are about music." Goldstein's comparison is unwittingly apposite: hip-hop and coon comedy both commodify black stereotypes and pass them off as an expression of racial authenticity. Thus, a century after Bert Williams and George Walker formed Two Real Coons, rap group N.W.A. produced a song called "Real Niggaz." Hip-hop loves to believe that it is "keepin' it real"; but by extolling negative behavior among African Americans as the only genuine blackness, these comedians and many rappers are keepin' it surreal.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
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12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!