Ethnic Notions

When thinking about minstrelsy I remembered a documentary I watched that looks at all the portrayals of African Americans. Ethnic Notions was released in in the 80's but it is still relevant and interesting.

"A Negro Love Song"

Bob Dylan's Hurricane

In class we were talking in class about African American culture and music. Hurricane tells a great story and shows how African Americans influenced genres that they might not normally.

Danez Smith - "Dear White America"

This piece of spoken word poetry by Danez Smith is a piece of African American literature that touches upon the issue of trying to take race out of our vocabularies, as we discussed in class on Wednesday. The classification of whites vs. blacks in America became integral to the development of black culture. Smith mocks this, saying essentially that Africans were forced to assimilate to American culture, and yet presently people are trying to strip African American culture of this in their efforts to erase the topic of racial tension.

Some quotes to consider:

“We did not ask to be part of your America, though are we not, America?”

“You took one look at the river plump with the body of boy after boy after sweet boy and asked, ‘why does it always have to be about race?’ Because you made it that way.”

Barak Obama, "A More Perfect Union"