scholarly journals Becoming-Black: Patterns and Politics of West-German ‘Afro-Americanophilia’ in the Late 1960s

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Moritz Ege
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Political Action ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Cultural Appropriation ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
Soul Music

In the late 1960s, African American culture and politics provided ‘lines of flight’ (Deleuze and Guattari) from outdated modes of subjectivity for many ‘white’ Germans; appropriating culture politics, and experimenting with forms of symbolically ‘becoming black’ represented a major cultural theme of the time. These tendencies resonated with: radical, anti-imperialist politics; countercultural sensibilities, where African American culture provided a radically contemporary critique of European modernity; the racialized, erotically charged logics of primitivism and romanticism in which ‘the repressed’ was to be brought back to the surface; and with a consumer-based economy and pop culture that supported the incorporation, domestication and aestheticisation of difference, desire and conflict.  This article sketches the patterns, forms and politics of the cultural theme of Afro-Americanophilia in Germany at the time, stressing the links between politics and corporeality.  In doing so, it illustrates that questions of race and racism were crucial for the 1968 conjuncture in Germany and it critically reviews the assumptions and implications of a specific form of hedonistic anti-racism in which ‘white’ European protagonists claimed ‘chains of equivalence’ (Laclau and Mouffe) between their position and that of people oppressed by racism and white supremacy.  Two case studies illustrate different forms and common patterns.  The first concerns a West Berlin network of radical-left groups that called itself ‘The Blues’ and combined militant political action (partly modelled on the activities of the Black Panther Party, according to some of its participants) with a countercultural sensibility. This included a felt connection to African American culture and stylistic practices. The second case study reviews the reception of soul music in the German music press and in countercultural circles, contrasting different readings of the supposedly ‘authentic.’  Overall, the article reconstructs practices of Afro-Americanophilia as ambiguous phenomena that foreshadow later forms of fetishistic cultural appropriation, but where, in some cases, the selective, erotically charged exoticism also led to tangible solidarity and strong connections. 

Twerking and Cultural Appropriation: Miley Cyrus' Display of Racial Ignorance

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shereen Zink
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Black Culture ◽  
Cultural Appropriation ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Miley Cyrus’ recent habit of twerking has sparked debate over whether the pop star is misappropriating African American culture; some even going so far as to accuse her of racism. This paper reviews the literature that exists in the public sphere on the topic, and delves into a scholarly analysis of Cyrus’ actions, statements, and the implications they have. My own post-analysis interpretation of the issue is addressed in the concluding paragraphs. Ultimately, twerking’s political context, and Cyrus’ lack of regard for said context, suggest that she is perpetuating harmful stereotypes about black women while her own white privilege allows her to maintain her integrity. Cyrus may not be intentionally exploiting black culture, but she is certainly communicating more than she may have bargained for.  

Musical Borrowings, Copyright, and the Canard of “Cultural Appropriation”

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Manuel
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Appropriation ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
The One ◽  
Cultural Interactions

This essay reviews the basic contours of the cultural appropriation controversies as they have been waged in reference to music in both academic and vernacular circles. It discusses some of the debates that have involved white performers’ musical borrowings from African American culture, and also musical flows outside the Euro-American mainstream. It explores relations of these ethical polemics to notions of copyright and argues that the latter can provide a moral guide to the propriety of many cultural interactions. It further critiques the terminological and conceptual distortions and obfuscations that have tended to plague discussions, both on scholarly and popular levels. These problems are evident in the very notion of “cultural appropriation,” which can be seen to emerge as a confused attempt to reconcile the anxiety generated by hegemonic borrowings, on the one hand, with the inevitability and ultimate desirability of cultural flows on the other.

Race, Reconstruction, and the Invention of “Negro Superstition,” 1862–1877

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
DAVID G. COX
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Culture ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
Magical Beliefs

This article traces the postbellum development and dissemination of the notion of “negro superstition.” By the end of Reconstruction, many whites across the nation, both liberal and conservative, shared in the belief that credulity was the keystone of African American culture. The formulation of superstition as innate racial trait served the conjoined causes of sectional reconciliation and white supremacy, eroding white support for black citizenship. As liberal estimations of black Christianity declined and conservative depictions of African American magical beliefs proliferated, “voodoo” gained traction as a potent imaginary, shorthand for racial atavism, unreason, and dangerous sexuality.

Johnny Ace: A Case Study in the Diffusion and Transformation of Minority Culture

Prospects ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 209-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Salem
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Woman ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Minority Culture ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
El Dorado ◽  
Rock N Roll

Johnny Ace, the mellow crooner of “Pledging My Love” (1955), may have been an influential transitional figure between rhythm & blues and rock ‘n’ roll, but he certainly did not die at age twenty-four playing Russian roulette with the singer Little Esther in a motel room in El Dorado, Arkansas. I heard this account from a black woman who saw him in person on the chitlin circuit, and who paid $2.50 in December of 1953 (“a hard amount to get in those days”) to attend a “Colored Only” dance featuring the Johnny Ace Band at the Elk's Rest Club in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The details she recalls of Ace's death are inaccurate, but the general story she remembers – the legend of Johnny Ace the rhythm & blues star as it exists today in the oral tradition of African-American culture – is closer to the truthin spiritthan almost everything ever written about him by rock historians.

Dark-Skinned Servants Through the Eyes of a White Author: a case study of K. Stockett’s Novel “The Help”

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 306-318
Author(s):  
Yulia L. Sapozhnikova
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Cultural Appropriation ◽  
White People ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
African American Authors ◽  
Green Book ◽  
Film Texts

If white authors speak on behalf of dark-skinned characters in their texts, African-American critics and writers often accuse them of attempting cultural appropriation. In this case, according to African-Americans, white people describe them only stereotypically and thus deprive them of a voice. Despite this, such attempts continue. In 2009, K. Stockett released her novel “The Help”, which is narrated by three women, including two dark-skinned maids (Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson). These characters tell about their experiences working for white masters in the early 1960s, in the city of Jackson, Mississippi, during a time of severe racial segregation. Newly arising after every release of such literary or film texts (just remember the recent film “Green book”), the ongoing controversy over cultural appropriation determines the relevance of addressing this topic. K. Stockett presents these characters as anti-racism fighters, with the word as their main weapon. Minny bluntly tells her employers what she thinks of them, which is in line with how African-American authors describe in their texts a way of speaking boldly to those you obey, called “to sass”. On the other hand, Aibileen tries not to show her attitude to white people and, in conversations with them, encodes the true content of her statements as much as possible, in fact using the practice of “signifying”, also characteristic of African-American culture: persuading other maids to tell a white girl about the relationship between masters and servants in their city, in order for it to be published. She deems the written preservation of an ethnic group history as a way to fight against racism. The author comes to the conclusion that K. Stockett follows, consciously or not, the traditions of African-American literature, in which many dark-skinned characters appear as tricksters.

Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History.

1998 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 1471
Author(s):  
V. P. Franklin ◽  
Jack Salzman ◽  
David Lionel Smith ◽  
Cornel West
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Culture ◽  
African American Culture
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