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[Rest]

I was saying that "blacks who avoid white culture" must be very uncommon. I wonder how they do it.

I don't think they're uncommon, I've met too many for me to believe that they aren't everywhere.

The way they do it is very easy. I live in what is supposed to be one of the most integrated cities in the US, but to me eyes I've never seen it as very integrated. One of the neighborhoods I grew up in had a main street and a freeway dividing it. There were poor people on one side of the freeway, and middle class people on the other side. You'd almost never see anyone cross that freeway going to a destination on the other side. If they went to the other side, it was just en route to another place further along, out of the neighborhood.

As for the main street, white people lived on one side, black people on the other. You'd see a handful of Latinos and Asians mixed in with the black side, but the white side was all white. You never saw anybody cross that street for any reason, except to go to a grocery store right in the middle of the neighborhood. In fact, the neighborhood had a reputation for decades that if a white person crossed into the black part of the neighborhood that they'd be attacked, and might be killed.

In a situation like that, communities can become very insular. There's a rap station, a rock station, and a pop station on the radio. The rap station is mostly black artists, and black people can just listen to that station to avoid "white" genres like pop, rock, and country. I don't know what TV is like now, but at the time UPN was trying to be a station for black people, so when I went to someone's house in the evening they might have UPN on. All other times, the only thing I saw on people's TVs was BET.

There are churches for black people, barber shops for black people, clothing stores for black people, and beauty supplies for black people. There are black schools and black community organizations. If a racist wants to shun white society, they have the option. Because of the near monolithic cultural status of the white majority it's impossible to completely avoid white culture, but it isn't that difficult to separate yourself from white people if you make an effort.

 

[eyeball_kid]

I don't know enough about the Aboriginal Australians to comment on how they feel about or how integrated into the larger canvas of Australian culture they are.

I had next to no contact with them growing up in Brisbane. My experience was limited to fearing the teenage ones who might harass you if you were in the city late on a Friday or a Saturday or the older ones you would see drinking in inner city parks.

I always made sure not to judge the whole based on those experiences. I also kept the fact that their culture was all but completely destroyed by the white people who settled the country in the late 1700s.

These days there are not many Aboriginal Australians left. About 500,000 according to Wiki. Nothing the government does to help or make up for its fuckups (stolen generation and the like) seems to help the situation at all.

Pretty much the same situation as Native Americans in the U.S. The native peoples and their culture were practically wiped out. Treaties ignored when it became inconvenient. The ones who were left were forced to relocate to what were basically internment camps so that Americans could expand westward. Now Americans treat the native peoples like they're a myth, like vikings or something. Made them sports team mascots and wear their sacred headdresses to music festivals. I mean at least there is discussion about black culture and black issues. No one even gives a shit about the indigenous people here or the systematic genocide and theft of lands the U.S. government committed upon them, let alone their culture.

 

[User 73706]

 

[Reflex]

I don't think they're uncommon, I've met too many for me to believe that they aren't everywhere.

The way they do it is very easy. I live in what is supposed to be one of the most integrated cities in the US, but to me eyes I've never seen it as very integrated. One of the neighborhoods I grew up in had a main street and a freeway dividing it. There were poor people on one side of the freeway, and middle class people on the other side. You'd almost never see anyone cross that freeway going to a destination on the other side. If they went to the other side, it was just en route to another place further along, out of the neighborhood.

As for the main street, white people lived on one side, black people on the other. You'd see a handful of Latinos and Asians mixed in with the black side, but the white side was all white. You never saw anybody cross that street for any reason, except to go to a grocery store right in the middle of the neighborhood. In fact, the neighborhood had a reputation for decades that if a white person crossed into the black part of the neighborhood that they'd be attacked, and might be killed.

In a situation like that, communities can become very insular. There's a rap station, a rock station, and a pop station on the radio. The rap station is mostly black artists, and black people can just listen to that station to avoid "white" genres like pop, rock, and country. I don't know what TV is like now, but at the time UPN was trying to be a station for black people, so when I went to someone's house in the evening they might have UPN on. All other times, the only thing I saw on people's TVs was BET.

There are churches for black people, barber shops for black people, clothing stores for black people, and beauty supplies for black people. There are black schools and black community organizations. If a racist wants to shun white society, they have the option. Because of the near monolithic cultural status of the white majority it's impossible to completely avoid white culture, but it isn't that difficult to separate yourself from white people if you make an effort.

Austin, TX?

 

[besada]

I hope I'm not derailing the thread, but besides Hip-Hop, Jazz and Rock, what other music did blacks made? It's almost sounds like music would not be as good if wasn't for the black Americans creating these music styles, but I want to know more.

Look up Soul, R&B, Techno, and Disco. All of them, and the forms based on them, would be wildly different.

Electronic music is one of my interests, and while Europeans were dick deep in electronic music, it came from music schools and reflected a classical bent. It was as much about the technological possibilities as it was about sounding good or fun. Black musicians approached it from the beats, and it's the beats we really think about when we think about modern electronic music.

So, you might have gotten Aphex Twin without black musicians (even that's a stretch) but you wouldn't have house, jungle, DnB, and all of their variants.

To be fair, you wouldn't have them without European technologists and scholars, either. One of the reasons it's such a vibrant scene is that it's incredibly cross-pollinated, now drawing influences from the entire globe.

 

[solomon]

 

[GraveHorizon]

White people are a continuous source of entertainment. Every day you turn on the news to see what crazy things those white folks are up to.

 

[Big Green Anus]

Look up Soul, R&B, Techno, and Disco. All of them, and the forms based on them, would be wildly different.

Electronic music is one of my interests, and while Europeans were dick deep in electronic music, it came from music schools and reflected a classical bent. It was as much about the technological possibilities as it was about sounding good or fun. Black musicians approached it from the beats, and it's the beats we really think about when we think about modern electronic music.

So, you might have gotten Aphex Twin without black musicians (even that's a stretch) but you wouldn't have house, jungle, DnB, and all of their variants.

To be fair, you wouldn't have them without European technologists and scholars, either. One of the reasons it's such a vibrant scene is that it's incredibly cross-pollinated, now drawing influences from the entire globe.

Thank you for this! My problem was that I usually see people online attempt to rewrite history regarding these musical styles, so it made me confused on what was actually true. Love reading about music history and other histories in general

 

[akira28]

White people are a continuous source of entertainment. Every day you turn on the news to see what crazy things those white folks are up to.

You know, if they weren't so dangerous...to everything, including the planet, they might almost be endearing.

 

[Rest]

Austin, TX?

No, I'm from California.

 

[J10]

LOL

 

[HK-47]

You know, if they weren't so dangerous...to everything, including the planet, they might almost be endearing.

Thats humans in general.

And it isnt endearing.

 

[HK-47]

Quoting this great post again.

Some of you make me wonder why you're on the Internet all day if you don't intend to actually learn anything from it.

To distract themselves.

 

[besada]

Thank you for this! My problem was that I usually see people online attempt to rewrite history regarding these musical styles, so it made me confused on what was actually true. Love reading about music history and other histories in general

The problem with discussing it is that everyone wants a simple answer, but that's not how it works. You take a simple rock song, and what you're really hearing is music influenced by everyone the musician likes, along with every song those people liked, etc. Art builds off of art and no one starts completely from scratch.

So, a band like Kraftwerk, regarded as pioneers in popular electronic music, are German, but they were influenced heavily not only by new technology and the German experimental music scene, but by groups like MC5 (who were influenced by R&B and Blues music), and early Stooges (also influenced by R&B, but by experimental musicians as well). And then R&B came out of what was called "race music" originally, which takes us back to jazz, gospel, and slavery. Of course, gospel music came from a mixture of Christian hymn music and traditional African music, which contained a lot of repetition, as it came from an oral culture.

If you trace the other way from Kraftwerk, you find that damn near everyone who uses electronic instruments was either influenced directly or indirectly by them. Bands that have claimed direct influence include anything from New Wave electronic artists to hip hop. It's a lot of fun to trace the influence lines, but if you do it a lot you'll discover a couple of things: 1) Detroit has had an outrageously outsize effect on modern music and 2) most of what we listen to that isn't country, folk, or classical owes its roots to black people in fields, singing to God in the hopes they'd one day be free.

 

[brinstar]

LOL

lmao I experienced this so much as a kid whenever I'd visit my friends' houses.

"you can do that?"

 

[Reflex]

lmao I experienced this so much as a kid whenever I'd visit my friends' houses.

"you can do that?"

I was like "You need to chill out before I get a whooping from MY Mama."