Quote:
Originally posted by Blackwatch
...A very touchy issue. As I read the ghetto fab party post, I began to think about this trend in American pop culture which Michael Eric Dyson calls the "Over popularization of AFRICAN AMERICAN culture". When mainstream culture becomes enamored with what they percieve as African American culture, then we have issues with essentializing African American identity. I think this is the phenomenon we are observing with hip-hop or "ghetto fabulous " culture and our response to it. Ghetto is a term thn is associated with low class or econmic disadvantage in our contemporary times. Historically it may have meant ethnic enclaves, but that is not the case anymore. In our white supremacist society, low class or undesireability is constantly connected to blackness. These ideas of disadvantage and "otherness" have also historically been connected with the idea of white middle class entertainments (think about minstrel shows in the 1800's). Black plight and abjection has seemingly been at the forefront of American pop culture in waves. What we witness today is a resurgence of black plight being seen as entertaining to whites (look at 50 cent's record sales as well as the popularity of Murder Inc. records). With record sales like that, obviously whites are digging black plight again. Not on the level to do anything about it, but simply to fetishistically gaze at the destruction of black life.
The only problem I have with the issue of whites throwing ghetto fab parties is that I think that is the only way that they accept blackness- or what they think true blackness is really about. But I have more of a problem when we as blacks actually think that "ghetto" (read low-classness or undesireable) is the essential black identity. This irks me because it smacks of self hatred in a way that is self destructive. When I teach kids who tell me that i ain't black because I graduated from high school, and from college, and have an advanced degree, this is the real tragedy of the ghetto fab ideal, that it snatches away from our people their divine potential to be great. If they believe this about themselves, when will they see the potential in them actualized?
Blackwatch!!!!!!
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I also deeply resent the notion that the only genuine AfAm experience can be found in the ghetto. It's something that I personally have experienced. I've been called "oreo" one too many times to, for instance, attack other black folks who aren't interested in an NPHC group.
And if whites throw "ghetto fab" parties, we provide them with fuel for the fire at times. We need to take responsibility for our own images and our own actions. I doubt that people got killed and maimed in the 1960s for us to act like azzclowns.
You see this "crabs in the barrel" syndrome in terms of public figures. We shun clean-cut people while we glorify thugs.