Well I think the first place one must begin, when it comes to white identity in the States is to immediately clarify exactly what the stereotype usually is, & usually it goes something like this: White Americans are , as a rule, thought to be "plain janes". They do not know anything interestig. They are thought to be "without a culture". They are safe, secure, polite, generally not aggressive, and not at all full of surprises. White americans do not know how to dance, they don't know how to "jump", they do not have rhythm, their music is hokey, and they often do not, it would seem, even know how to really dress or be up to date with the latest fashions. White americans tell strange jokes that always seem a bit 'awkward". They just aren't very fun. They aren't spicy. They are, as you can see, plain janes. White americans are the ones in the plain Levi jeans, with an "old fashioned" style baseball cap, with no jewelry, no fancy sneakers, no tattoos, etc. The men keep a regular hairstyle, they do not shave shapes into it ...they do not do anyhing out of the ordinary, etc. White people are "serious". They don't have time for that sort of immature stuff. This is basically the extent of the stereotype....
Now, the thing that I have always myself found so fascinating about this particular US stereotype is that it is actually just as powerful and fierce on both the black and white side of town. Neither racial group in the States, in a very serious way, enjoys it when a white tries to break out of this box. Blacks, on the one hand, often seem to feel as though the white is encroaching on their territory as the "default exotic presence", and whites of course do not like it because, well, you are not conforming to their plain Jane world. It's for this reason, you will see when you study US culture, that oftentimes the biggest white rebels of all--even if they love blacks-- actually seem to be downright despised and mocked in black communities, whilst being often ignored in the majority white one. For example, when you look at the manner in which the punk rock movement is interpreted by blacks, you see very quickly that they have a hard time taking it seriously because, to them, what else does it look like but a bunch of "whiny white brats" who are, one could say, "not grateful enough" for their blessed position in the US society. At the same time as this, you have the majority whites who look at the anti-capitalist ethics of the punk movement, as well as the outrageous fashion it loves, and they reject it for...mostly the same reason. "You seriously are a punk, kid! How dare you not want to be white, and boring. How dare you." You get the point?
And don't think that punk rock is the only white boy (or girl) "weirdo" movement that gets rejected on both sides of town, because it certainly is not. The truth is that basically almost any white movement you can think of that attempts to draw outside the line or get a little exotic tends to find itself immediately, and I mean immediately, rejected, by both communities. Another wondrous example is a more recent one, that being the case of Iggy Azalea, a white woman who came to us by way of Australia, obsessed with rap music...and very eager to make a go of it, here in the United States. Iggy Azalea, you see, did something as an adult, that most other white girls in the USA cease to do, generally, the moment they turn 18 or 19 or so, and go off to college: She did not realize that she was supposed to immediately morph into someone "plain" the moment she turned 18 (because she is not an American) and so she came over here and just kept going onwards with an act that, again, most American white girls do away with, the moment they are adults, just like most American white boys also do away with the act of being "fun", the moment they are men. Because a white man is supposed to be a serious man. He is not supposed to be a joker, or a dancer, or a rapper, or any of these things. A white man is supposed to, you know, act like a man. He can't dance. He can't jump. He can't be suave. He ought not wear jewelry. He ought not cut shapes into his hair. On and on it goes, ss I stress....
All of this, you think, sort of makes some sense for whites to embrace and to keep conforming to, because we understand whites are privileged so long as they are seen as "not weird" or "not dangerous", and yet we see again, as I say, that it is not just whites who endlessly embrace this and keep stressing it. It is also blacks, and now perhaps Latinos, who also embrace this image of whites and who do not seem, oftentimes, to want it to end. In my opinion, blacks at this point in time occupy a part of US culture that is very toxic in many ways, but that it seems many of them also aren't too happy about leaving. The part of the culture they occupy, of course, is that they are the "exotic" and "interesting" and "fun" part of it....completely.
The blacks, in our own time, get to be the dancers, the real 'hip' music, they cut shapes into their hair, they wear oh so exotic dreadlocks, they wear interesting sneakers and odd makeup, etcetc...they are always at the forefront of new American fashion. Yes, they are still absolutely discriminated against down there in the Real World, but when it comes to the Media World, blacks are living in the center of the "fun storm". From a media standpoint, they seriously seem to be living the equivalent of Peter Pans wet dream: blacks never age and they never grow old and die. They just keep coming out with new rap songs and pouring more Hennessy. They just keep making new sneakers. They just keep dancing...and keeping the party alive. The night down at the imaginary black dance club is a never ending night.
In fact, speaking of night, that's a part of the whole problem for our friends the American blacks: They have now been, for about 50 years, from a media standpoint, "creatures of the nightlife". Who knows where these folks are during the day ... but they come scurrying out at night, from all corners of the exotic US city, to come and .. do what, exactly? Oh yss...thats right. Entertain the whites. Yes,yes,yes. Entertain the whites who...we know...cannot entertain themselves. And why, of course, can't whites entertain themselves? Because they are BORING! They are plain Janes. They cannot dance! They cannot sing! They cannot do da hippity hop, Daddy O. They don't know how to dress. They always come out on stage looking so frightfully typical. They don't cut dragon designs into the back of their head. They don't have dreadlocks. And...God forbid they should attempt to dread their white hair...what are they? Why, they are cultural appropriators, my friends. They are the thieves and vultures of a helpless, weak minority culture. They are , like Iggy Azalea, "Fakes". And you will see, like I tell you, that this is very widely accepted in all areas of white and black adult culture.
So now it has become a topic of cultural appropriation of course, and just why this idea has become such a malignant, cancerous, and poisonous idea. For the truth of the cultural appropriation claim is that it is really exactly what the theoretical white supremacists want you to say. The reason why is obvious: By calling out Iggy Azalea, who wants to date black men and do the hippity hop, as a cultural appropriator, we are, in truth, policing her, and insisting to her that she should remain plain Jane, and remain "a boring white", and not be bothered with black culture, which we are repeatedly told is so exotic. By calling out Iggy and others like her who have attempted, in their own weird way, to de-segregate the music world and thus the race world at large, we are actually, in my opinion, supporting white supremacy and strict white identity, because we are telling her that she must be polite, and behave, and not shake her booty. She must not, for example, sleep with black men and then wake up in the morning and use some of the slang they use. She must not style her clothes the way a black man might want to see her style them. She must not try to get herself a bigger romp because, hey, she heard black men like big romps. God damn't, don't you know a good, proper white girl doesn't do them thangs! A good proper white gal is plain Jane. She doesn't shake her romp or wear oddball makeup or , of course, go date bad black men in Atlanta, Georgia (which was Iggys #1 destination after migrating from all white Australia).
Before Iggy Azalea took the world by storm with fun rap hits like "Work" and "Fancy, of course, there were other whites, whether girls or boys, who have done exactly what she did -- many of them, everyone should know -- and they all, in one way or another, seem to ultimately end up with a similar fate: They are always oddly embraced at first, when they first bust out of the gate, and lifted up to enormous heights of success, but then they are suddenly, after a few years, whipped, by both commnities, and seen as deeply shameful and embarassing things whites and blacks both just want to wash their hands of and forget. They are like weird awkward step children we all just desperately want to toss out after the quickly expire. We look back and find them frightening. We find them cringe worthy. "What is this wretched thing we have created!?" It is, quite literally, the mutant interracial child, the mestizo, the mixed being. And no one, even in 2017, still quite knows wat to make of it. Thats what Iggy Iggz is. She is the result of black on white love, baby. She looked cute at first, didn't she...? But now ..what is she? Now she's scary! She's threatening our BORDERS! She brings blacks to the white side of town, and whites to the black side! Get her OUT!
Shame, shame! Embarasment! Cultural thief! Vulture! Horrid mistake! Bad! No good! Cringe worthy! Colonizer! Appropriator! Mutant!
This thing literally happens on both a national pop culture level as well as an individual level in the States: the naive white boy or girl who "Acted black" during adolescence often becomes ashamed that they ever fell for it, once they see what the adult reality of blacks is, and the pop culture as a whole becomes deeply ashamed of the actual white star who, you could say, drove the tour bus through the hood. Examples of previous Iggy Azaleas who give pop culture a "tour of the hood" include but certainly are not limited to the Rolling Stones, the 90s "Reggae/punk" band Sublime, Janis Joplin, Eminem, and of course, the biggest and first bomb of all, Elvis Presley, out of good ol' oh so plain Tupelo, Mississippi. All of these artists --some integrate styles more than others -- ultimately wind up with one thing in common: They both fused white and black music and experienced enormous initial success because of it, but then, as you watch their legacy, you see that their star bursts very quickly, in a certain sense. It becomes a shameful star -- one that new pop culture doesn't so much fancy referencing. It becomes something scholars look back to and shake their heads in gloom."Sad, wasn't it? All he did was steal from poor blacks." says everyone. "So pathetic. So embarassing. This mulatto mutant. Isn't he hideous? He grew to look so hideous as an adult. Yuck!" Their legacy never sticks. They turn 30 or so, and ....we look away.
For example, when we look back at white artists of yesteryear who weren't obviously mixing cultures as much as the aforementioned artists, we see something that I find incredible: They are often still considered totally safe references to use in the modern day, in ways that the very obvious cultural integrator artists are not. They age in a wildly different way. The music eventually gets seen as far more mature.
One of the best examples to use is a band like Led Zeppelin versus the Rolling Stones: Zeppelin came out of the gate a bit later than the Stones, debuting in the early 70s rather than the mid 60s, and Led Zeppelin -- though they played some blues -- did not really ever write songs that directly referenced our America, and especially black America, like the Rolling Stones often did. They also did not do nearly as many covers of old blues songs as the Stones did in the earliest 60s part of their career, when they played everything and anything black men like Muddy Waters, Slim Harpo, Howlin' Wolf, Jimmy Reed, Chuck Berry, and onwards ever did. Led Zeppelin seems very English; in fact, when I was a boy with friends, we often used to listen to some of their acoutic songs and remark that it just felt like we needed some English tea to go along with it. The Stones never feel this way in any of their real big songs. At all. And what happened as a result of this is that the Stones got themselves caught out almost immediately as so-called "cultural appropriators" whereas Led Zeppelin, really still to this day, just passes under a completely white, English lens.
Due to this fact, this band is very much still referenced, whereas the Stones, you'll find, are seen as rather hokey, and ridiculous. Like Iggy Azalea is, or like Vanilla Ice. The heavy metal community, for instance, (as dead serious and "white" as could be, in some sense) absolutely adores the Led Zeppelin reference. No shame at all to call them out. But when you try to find the Stones legacy in modern times (and specifically in rock, I should add) , you see something very interesting for aband that sold as many records as they did: It's almost no where to be found .There are no new Stones. For the new version of that band is not playing rock and roll, you see. Why though? Why does the modern rock community reject the Stones and their legacy but remember Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd obsessively? It is because both the blues element and the other fun thing the Stones had, which was Mick Jagger. Also known as "Peter Pan". Also known as an earlier and very retro version of, guess who, Iggy Azalea. Those other bands, you see, all seem "COLD"in some way: Sabbath was about wizards and weirdos, Ozzy was very ugly and odd (white), Pink Floyd was simply too technical and not for dancing, and Zeppelin was, again, just too English. So white boys looking to flip a tough "I'm a serious white man" coin can joyously still ride with them in our own time.
The Stones, though, were like warm Aunt Jemima syrup or something like that. Jagger was a silly little fool who shook his ass and slapped it and jumped up and down. It was childish. AkA black. Aka Iggy Iggz, baby.
But no, you cry! No no! How could one compare Mick Jagger to someone like Iggy? God, it's simply not possible. There are no similarities! There are, however; in fact, there are plenty. For the truth about Jaggers entire act was that he again did something that those other white band leaders did not to such an extent: Jagger danced in a very wild way for the time period, and this wild dance he did was not just seen as womanly (which we now interpret it at)...it was also seen as being rather primal, and/or "of the black jungle". Yes, in our own time, one watches a clip of Jagger and we just see a white man acting like some "fairy", some "woman", some "child" , but the old folks of Jaggers youth saw something else. They saw what we see, essentially, when we watch young Iggy Iggz take to the stage and shake her big white romp like she's not from Australia, or New Hampshire, but rather from Atlanta, Georgia, or...Africa. This is literally what Mick Jagger looked like to the old folks of his own youth. This is exactly why it was such an explosion at the time, and also why it is now such a shameful and no good thing for everyone to look back to. What modern people must undestand in this story is that Jagger entered into a world of suited up and very serious white men. He entered into a world of white men who most certainly did not dance...my God, they did not even undo their tie. He entered into a world where a white boy became a dead serious white man at the age of 16. He entered into a culture of music, specifically, where a white man simply did not sing songs in that enthusiastic of a manner as he oftensang. That stuff was for blacks! And blacks alone! Blacks, the eternal children of the primitive forest. Blacks, the goofy ones who get up on stage and shake their romps and dance for you.Blacks, you see, "too dumb" to understand how dead serious this world is, so they just go on dancing eternally through the night, unaware of how close we are to, say, nuclear apocalypse or going bankrupt or mismanaging the Empire. Blacks, who tell us jokes and make us laugh and smile, as the Empire burns or flourishes, thanks to the dead serious white man, who must hold the burden of keeping it afloat on his back, all the livelong day.
Jagger threw all of this to the wind and said .. look look, I want to dance like that too. In fact, I want to spend my life on stage dancing and singing like that. I take nothing about your Empire seriously, either! I am a creature of the night! Look, look. I am a white man, but I find life to be a joke. Let me be...Peter Pan. Let me be the Jester. Let me be...black.
For people who, perhaps, don't believe any of this of course, and who think that I am mistaken, whether white or black, my immediate an dinstant advice is very simple: Look outside of the United States towards cultures that have a big, healthy media, and that are also not as integrated as our own, and have no real "minority" element, and you will start to see that they do not seem to feel anywhere near as pressured as the common American white does, to be a plain Jane, or a dead serious soldier, or an expressionless, colorless spectator. They do not feel this way because the box of "JESTER" or "ENTERTAINER" ,et cetera, is not one, in their homogeneous world, that is thought to be for one group of individuals in particular. They would certainly descend into the same absurd panic we have, except for the fact that they literally cannot, because they don't have anyone except their own people to call up when it's show time, or night club time.
As a result of this, some (a very rare few) American whites and blacks look over to European countries, and they are often bewildered when they find that European white folk seem rather interesting and spicy and easy going, in comparison to American whites. They seem "gayer". They seem more creative, and to not be dead serious. They let their hair down and they certainly do not think of themselves as "boring plain Janes". And many of them, I can assure you, wuld glady come and integrate themselves into our own pop culture scene, if only they spoke our language. Which they do not. Which is why the only guests we ever see are the Australians or the English, whom we promptly scold and tell to get away and get out and "ye ain't allowed act like dat, don't chaknow?"
Hence what I pesonally see after all of this is that, in their own way -- and this will be a controversial statement -- blacks have served to "metaphorically" imprison the white American, in an oddly similar way to the manner in which the white American has literally imprisoned blacks. Yes, the prison that the white American sits in is not so uncomfortable as the black ghetto or the penitentiary, crtainly not, its quite comfortable, in fact ---- but it is its own little limited prison all the same. It is a prison of a gilded cage. It is a prison of politesse and no romp shaking, a prison of boredom, seriousness, and stark grey walls and the idea of "endless security". It is a prison that is thought to be one of total responsibility, of no comedy, of being forever on time, of not goofing off, etc etc. I call it the spectator prison for obvious reasons: The white "prisoner" , man or woman, can, at this point in our culture, take in as much fun Black Media as he or she wants, but they are never to actually try to recreate that fun. They are only to watch. They are to stay seated and watch, not to participate. Previously of course, like in the 1940s or the 50s with blues, even watching was a sin for the white. Now watching is matter of factly accepted; but it is participating that has become the next crime....
Now, before I log out of this article, there is one final thing which I would like to touch upon, an which has bothered me for many years, and also ties in with this same topic. It is the discussion of the musical instruments themselves, in fact,which supply the soundtrack for the night creatures to dance to, and how I am convinced that they are, in many ways, also now falling prey to this horrific disease of "everything white is hokey and colorless".
See, what is happening in our own time is that, since we all keep looking back and rejecting white artists either as totally hokey (like country stars who never integrate) or just as cultural appropriators (because they integrate) it has now become the case that pop culture also no longer seems to know quite what to do with instruments themselves, since many of these instruments that supply all this musical fun were invented by the evil, hokey whites. It hrdly matters what instrument one is looking at :Guitars, banjos, harmonicas, mandolins, pianos, drumsets, flutes, tambourines, etc. Almost all of the instruments seem to carry som sort of "lame" connotation with them at this point, an the connotation, in my opinion, has next to nothing to do with age, and everythin to do with race. Yes you heard it right: I am firmly of the belief that modern pop culture in the States is rejecting these instruments largely because of race: We now believe that they are all the previous musical weapons of an horrifically racist and destructive culture. Therefore, the response has been to make music where you no longer have to actually see the instruments. The evil racist piano, for example, is often present in hip hop songs, but no one is ever too often seen actually playing one. You hear the piano but almost don't take such serious note of it as you would in a rock song.. The same can be said for everything else. And previous black movements that used white instruments seem to be seriously despised and ignored by the American blacks: Reggae, the blues, jazz,. Why did these fools use the white mans instrument? How dare they. Bob Marley, for example, faces the same sad legacy as Hendrix and Muddy Waters: The white guitarists take him, but the black boys forsake him. Poor Bob Marley, the American black community seems to think, didn't he know that guitars are created racist?
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