Of Rap and Racism

The question posted in John Cook's article's title is stupid: If you don't like rap, are you a racist? But that's because the basic claim being assessed here - that one's cultural tastes and preferences correspond to or can be mapped onto one's racial identity - is ludicrous. If, say, Toni Morrison were to profess that she didn't enjoy reading or watching performances of Shakespeare plays, would that make her a racist? And what about black jazz musicians who don't like rap? Are they 'race traitors?'

If only someone - perhaps Jessica Hopper's and Sasha Frere-Jones's editors - would call two posturing writers on the racist logic informing their smears of Stephen Merritt, the singer-songwriter who is best known for his work with the Magnetic Fields, whom they attack for being an outright racist and a cracker. Someone please make these two read Paul Gilroy's Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line, which explains why it's a mistake - logically, politically, ethically, and morally - to divide humanity into identity groups based on skin color.

And if you want to say in response that race goes beyond skin color, that it's a 'social construction,' read Walter Benn Michaels' work to understand how modern and postmodern talk about cultural identity repeated the same, discredited logic of racial essentialism as did talk about racial identity in the late 19th and early 20th century.

I've a lot more to say, but I've got to get back to a paper on performance and DeLillo before heading to the MCA for a talk about Chris Ware.