White appreciation vs appropriation

First of all, I am a HUGE fan of rap music. Being that I am a privileged white male, I thought this author's points about white appreciation of rap versus appropriation of it were very interesting. Enjoyment of the genre from all races is really a big factor in whether or not it persists as a cultural form of expression, so white audiences are important. That being said, I don't think listening to rap as a white dude (like me) should make you feel like you've lived through the struggles of the rappers themselves, or that you truly understand what things can be like, fighting against an oppressive system, growing up with a lack of pivotal black characters on television, and so on. Unfortunately, for some of the white dudes, that's exactly the train of thought. I thought this meme I found summed up that way of thinking pretty well:



I can understand the blowback within the African American community as far as white people using this form of cultural medium to their advantage, given the historical connotations that the author of this week's reading illustrates, but before this class I was taken aback by a recent J. Cole lyric in Fire Squad (a song off of his new album) "History repeats itself and thats just how it goes, Same way that these rappers always bite each others flows, Same thing that my *&%$@ Elvis did with Rock n Roll
Justin Timberlake, Eminem, and then Macklemore, While silly *&%@! argue over who gone snatch the crown, Look around my &%$#@ white people have snatched the sound, This year I'll prolly go to the awards dappered down, Watch Iggy win a Grammy as I try to crack a smile, I'm just playin', but all good jokes contain true shit, Same rope you climb up on, they'll hang you with." I now kind of understand his and others' issues with this better, but before this class, neither I or any of my close friends had any idea what blackface minstrelsy was or of the extent to which white media has historically mis-projected the African American community as a whole.

I think this is the hard part for more modern white rap fans to understand. I'm not saying that things in America are fair between the races, I think that would be extremely ignorant to think, but racial relations are a lot better than they were at the start of rap. I think that leads to white Americans (like me) misperceiving what exactly it means to try to live through someone else's culture, when that culture has a history of being repressed through that form of media and others. Again, personally I'm not trying to live through it, I just love to appreciate the work of great rap artists, but I think this misperception is what can lead to white people offending African Americans through their expression of a culture that is not their own. Obviously I can't completely understand this issue, or the complexities therein, but it's just a thought I had while reading.

Also, I think the second half of the reading would be really useful to a couple of the presenter's final projects!