Eminem (was: Influenced by GR?)

[jbor]

----------
>From: Terrance <Lycidas at worldnet.att.net>
>To: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
>Subject: Re: Eminem (was: Influenced by GR?)
>Date: Thu, Jul 27, 2000, 9:16 AM
>

> Why don't you look the book up? I provided the name and
> author.

Two days afterwards. Why should I look the book up, and how can I if you
don't have the courtesy to include the friggin' reference in your post in
the first place?

>  It wasn't a disclaimer or
> a persona.

So you really believe it is appropriate to speak of "the thinking negro" in
those terms?

I'll reproduce the whole post. I still don't understand how it relates to
the subject line or to the quote you are purportedly responding to. I cannot
see how it refers to Tom Wolfe either. I can see that you are having a dig
at "the white intellectual" -- and, in the context of the thread I cannot
but think that a jibe sent in my direction -- but I also think you are
denigrating African-Americans and their treatment in the US by trying to
play down the claims for civil rights and equity made on their behalf.

> jporter wrote:
>
> Still, the music is a bridge for him and his
>> white (and asian and jewish) friends to understand and appreciate another
>> facet of HIS American Culture, and, therefore, it is way, way more valuable
>> and influential than Pynchon will ever be.  Pynchon is advanced technology
>> for the elite- a manual for a post post POSTgrad seminar in control.
>>
>> jody
>
> Yeah, The Negro to the white intellectual is what is he has
> always been, not a man, but a Myth. The Old Negro is a myth,
> a creature of moral debate and historical controversy. I
> have to laugh, two turntables and a microphone are now
> legend in a dictionary of rap or some such, I remember one
> turntable and microphone so does that make me cool or wigger
> to a white intellectual, or is there another term, another
> stock figure perpetuated by as an historical fiction without
> the innocent sentimentalism, partly in deliberate
> reactionism, attributed to the Negro. Yeah I put it on and
> the Negro, he contributes to it too with his protective
> social mimicry forced upon him, you know, by the adverse
> circumstances of dependence. A formula, right, an equation,
> like some compromise, not quite human: argued about,
> condemned and defended, kept down in his place and lifted up
> and empowered, worried about, and over, harassed and
> patronized, a social burden, a social problem, a social
> super fly on the wall of you conscience guilty with longing
> to feel the rhythm of the Negro, the beat, the beat, boom,
> can you here those big words dropped from the ivory tower
> hit the streets. Yes, and the thinking negro, he got the
> same J O B, same attitude, waste all his time on these
> controversial issues, looking in the invisible mirror trying
> to see himself from the empty perspective of a social point
> of view, his shadow more real to him than his personality,
> he's had to appeal from the unjust stereotypes of his
> oppressors and traducers to those of his liberators, friends
> and benefactors he has had to subscribe to the traditional
> position from which his case has been viewed.  What
> self-understanding or social truth can come from such a
> situation? The Negro is become a "Vogue" again, partly as
> the result of a growing interest in the new Jazz, folkways,
> different spirits, partly as the result of the glamour and
> notoriety brought to the new Harlem Renaissance by the same
> old wealthy dilettantes who have taken it up as a sort of
> amusing hobby.

To describe people who are committed to social justice as "wealthy
dilettantes" taking up an "amusing hobby" is very insulting. To suggest that
the forefathers of latter-day African-American citizens are mythic is
untenable. I'm not "posturing": I find racial prejudice unacceptable and I'm
calling you on it. It's quite possible I haven't understood what you were
trying to convey in your post, and I would be happy to have it expressed
more clearly.

***

> In the U.S., we managed
> to shift the bulls eye from the black man to various yellow
> men, this  is not a paranoid myth or a political narrative,
> it's a fact, it happened, it's history, U.S. history.
> Chinese came to the U.S. in large numbers for the first time
> after the 1848 gold discoveries in California, the Chinese
> miners tax was imposed in 1850

After 1850 racial discrimination against black men no longer existed in the
US? Crap.

The Chinese "came to" America. When did the black man ever have that freedom
of choice?

***

>
> There are apx. 270, 000,000 people living here. Apx.
> 16,000,000 are black men, but may put this number lower and
> the total population higher, so black men would be around
> 5-6%.

Does the statistic include juveniles? Women? Why may we minimise the number
and raise the total? What is the point of this statistic anyway, except to
marginalise the group still further? The smaller the minority the less they
matter, the less right they have to a voice?

***

>> > It's complicated, but every morning I see the black
>> > Columbian students kiss the White Columbian students on the
>> > cheek and the white Columbian students kiss the black
>> > Columbian students, the Sudanese hang with Poles for some
>> > reason, Communisim they tell me, but I suspect it's
>> > something else,  the Korean and the Mexicans girls giggle
>>
>> They're all "Americans" too, aren't they?
>
> No, not yet.

Then what, pray tell, are they, and how many more hoops will these residents
and citizens of the US have to jump through before they make the grade?

***

>  Afrocentric crap ...  Afrocentric attack on
> Hellenism is particularly poor on facts and rich on crap

Are you saying that Aristotle's statement that there are "natural slaves" is
accurate? And thereby attempting to justify the practice of it?

***