April 16, 2005

• Hip hop is not "black" culture and has not been for some time. It's world youth culture. (go to Europe) Outside of open mic night at the Comedy Store, I think everyone knows by now that kids of all races like and get hip hop. Also, in high school, we called them "yo's" or "yo-boys"
• also, do you have anything on the drinkenest Wigger in Kentucky?
• As a wigger, I am offended by your remark drjimmy.
• "sir, you are talking to a Wigger!"
• Am I allowed to say "shizzle?"
• Shouldn't there be a porn link next? I really don't want to miss out on the objectification.
• Don't forget Wigger Comix (for a laugh) and Wiggaz for all your wiggerwear needs!
• All this thread needs is a DEH* and we've got some fun Friday night action! *Doris Exploding Head
• I forgot about that term, but the white homeless boy I let use my shower is the wiggerest of them all. He even says PO-lice. He's from Oklahoma, which I don't know is relevant or not. And I loved it when Chinese boys on the bus in San Francisco would greet each other with all the wassup stuff, then switch to Cantonese or what-have-you.
• is there a term for asian people tryng desperately to talk like hip poppers? asian hip pop is full of people saying stuff like "yo. word. i'm just a soft g. my crew thinks i'm wack."and of course these are usually people i could lay the smack down on. puny ass gangstas. and on preview: i think it's important to note the difference between hip pop and hip hop.
• I'm fascinated by people sorting out race stuff in their own way. I remember this conversation at a call-centre job among me, a Metis chick, and some Brown girls (or Indo-Canadian to use the newspaper-sanctioned term around these parts) about whether Italians were White or not. This, of course, had never occurred to me; but if you're going strictly on skin it made a certain amount of sense. I don't remember how it came up exactly - probably just everybody bored to shit as usual.
• As usual, I guess it's up to me to turn this into a shitstorm of some sort.. nah.... it's friday... I only do that on thursdays...
• This conversation about cross-cultural pollination has reminded of Tokyo Breakfast. SFW if you're wearing headphones, otherwise NSFW
• Ah! There shall be no...how do you say? Shit? Storm? This FPP was clearly labeled NSFKJ = Not Safe For Knee Jerk. As you were. Dinner at seven.
• No shitstorm required. Everyone self-identify, and wear name tags a la license plates. Problem solved. Having said that, I'm really pissed by the audacity of this post. Tracicle, delete your account at once! P.S.: Wiggers abound.
• Wiggers abound, and the Dude abides.
• I for one am offended that HuronBob isn't offended.
• I41,M2
• And I think uhmyang makes a good point about the difference. From what I have seen in my parts, a criminal record or hardcore street cred is required. The white boys are usually fakers or blowhards. Especially, the manufactured badasses are lame, and the worst offenders. I think it's wonderful that "modern culture" will never catch up with the underground. Every generation confounds the marketers, and that is a good thing.
• "wigger" makes me uncomfortable, not because of its meaning, but the sound of it makes me think of something trying to crawl into my ear. *shiver* I'm a-gonna lean this 100 TON Hammer™ righta here now; jes go ahead and-a use it on any knee-jerkers. Or jerks. G'night all.
• Every generation confounds the marketers I thought the marketeers always figure out the underground, and that why it's forced to keep changing. The underground fluxes in a continuous attempt thwarting the overground. Actually, it's that underground knows that some of it will seep into the overground. This would be a foothold for the overground if the underground wasn't in constant flux. The fluxious nature of the underground insures that when the overground gain a foothold on a seep, they'll only make down a few steps until they reach a dead end.
• You have just defined the opposite of entropy, Mr. K. Whatevah.
• "Whigger" is calculated to be offensive and inciteful. It's a trope. It has no inherent meaning unless one is invested in the racist argument.
• Otherwise, it's just an amusing reference to white boys trying to appropriate another culture, which ironically, they have no right to. And so it goes.
• Interesting that I have never heard "whigger" applied to a female.
• I don't know what wigger or Metis means.
• I invested my life savings in the racist argument- it was a total rip-off!
• Me either. I thought at first it might be a footy fan from Wigan.
• Wait, what's the opposite of entropy?
• Sorry for the supposed typo, but it's "Whig" here. Ring any bells?
• i didn't necessarily mean 'the underground'. Hip Pop - "because i can get a record dealy yo. because peoples' is so wiggity whack!" Hip Hop - "because i am penetrated to the core by making beats and spewing rhymes" Love of music knows no color bounds. Neither does love of fame.
• Silly, the opposite of entropy is atrophy! I'ts a matter of degree.
• uhmyang: Now I really don't get that. You sound jaded, not racist. I respectfully suggest that you have the wrong thread.
• "Whig" to me means the political party. Sorry, I think it's just a term not in use here.
• Sorry! Ir was a clumsy attempt to engage our British friends! Won't happen again ...
• shamina: question my racism? u wigga!
• Yeah those damn Whigs! They be all frontin' like "I voted for William Henry Harrison" when you know they totally voted for Van Buren!
• william henry! werd!
• Uhmyang: You are grammatically correct but politically wrong! You are a Whig!
• shamina: Whigga what, whigga who? whigga what, whigga who? Switcha flow, getcha dough Can't f**k with this William-Henry shit doe Switcha flow, getcha dough Can't f**k with this William-Henry shit doe *repeat 3X*
• ... And can I just say that wiggers are everywhere you see a cap turned backwards. They are where you see a white boy with his pants hanging below his crack. If it's unfathomable, it must be a wigger.
• Last weekend I was in Vancouver visiting the folks. My old Dad and I were having a tumbler of Duggan's Dew, watching the evening news. There was a piece on about racial diversity in the former outpost of Victoria's empire and my Dad said, "You know, in a couple of generations, we're all going to be beige." He seemed quite pleased. Yo.
• OK, I guess I don't connect at all. Are you one of those homeless guys that asks me questions by the library?
• Foosh!
• OK, here goes. A paeon(sp) to whigs in the style of my high school pep song. Whiteys forever, fight on and win go on to victory take trouble on the chin! (Go Whiteys) Carry Your colors right down the field show them all that whiteys always end what they begin fight on and win
• WTF?
• dang! I thought you said frosh!
• Sorry, but I was a cheerleader.
• it's just an amusing reference to white boys trying to appropriate another culture, which ironically, they have no right to Wrong. They have every right to dress, speak, and act as they please.
• They can do what they want, but they're still pos3rs.
• And Islander! I have had your experience. But future generations will not be beige. The stupid racial divisions only get worse.
• Maybe everyone's a poseur except the originators, who are a couple decades behind us. Definitely what is going on now and here are consumers and you don't have to be white to be one of those. It's marketing! It worked!
• but they're still pos3rs. But that's why I asked this; When does cultural appropriation just turn into your environment? Is it a colour thing or a culture thing at this stage of the game? Does a kid from the Philippines have more right to identify with what can be seen as Black American youth culture than some white kid from a shit neighbourhood in Detroit? Maybe sometimes it's a colour thing, and sometimes it's a poverty/powerless thing. Personally I think that 'culture', like 'art' is whatever you can get away with.
• I think it's sorta silly, absurd and possibly disrespectful to treat another culture as one's playground. With one big caveat: if it's not marketed to you. For instance, I used to get a tidge impatient with white kids who would go thru hell to get their hair all dreadlocked. Maybe one of of ten of them knew what dreadlocked hair meant to the Rastarafians, and maybe one out of a hundred thought they were Rastas. Same thing with all those tiresome hippies who professed to be Native Americans. They wore the earrings and told the stories. That was appropriation, it seems to me. But various permutations of black music and culture have been a huge thing with white hipsters for decades. It's just that this particular permutation, in the past couple decades, is not just providing the talent but has actually managed to control the money and the distribution and everything else. That's power! And it's the dominant power because what is the alternative? Punk was all about DIY. That's limited power. Riot grrrrrrrls were DIY. That's limited power. If I wera a white youth away fom a punk scene I'd be as black as I could. Except one thing thing: I'm female.
• Also, this battle was fought before in the "White Negro" battles. It was different, yeah, and the music was different, yeah, but here's your google link. [It's a trip that Kingsblood Royal is mentioned in that; I have a first edition of that book for some reason and reread it this year.]
• Trust me, this is a non-issue to everyone under 25. They just listen to the music they like and that's that.
• Hey you kids! Get outta that Jello trizzle!
• Not trusting drjimmy to speak for everyone born since 1980. What's a trizzle?
• Hiphop may have transcended black culture, but there will always, always be wiggers.
• What's a trizzle? They're those little furry things that got onboard the Enterprise and multiplied like rabbits and FLIPPED THE FUCK OUT whenever that disguised Klingon got too close to them and Kirk was all like Dammit. Bones. Tribbles. In. My. Pants. Klingon. Bastards.
• I'm sorry, but this is one of the best threads I've ever seen. I think there is a movie in here somewhere, maybe a Spike Jones/Mel Brooks collaboration.
• I thought wegro was the preferred term?
• mecurious: racism brings out the best in monkeyfilter. kill all white. kill all white.
• "When does cultural appropriation just turn into your environment?" That's a very good question and I think it helps to spotlight the divided identity (along racial lines) we have here in the U.S.. The fact that we see hip hop as a Black thing and not an American thing is a symptom of our split cultural identities and a leftover from our extremely racist past. In my opinion, any new form of music, dance, fashion, etc., which arises from any group in our society belongs to all Americans and therefore when I partake of it, I'm not appropriating anything, I'm simply expressing a part of my American cultural identity. Btw, Jazz, Blues, Rock and Roll and other forms of early American music inspired these sorts of discussions also. Time, I think, has enabled us see those forms of American expression as American and I think, eventually, hip hop will be seen that way as well.
• The Fighting Whites.
• Is this going to turn into one of those "Britney Spears is punk!" "NO, GANDHI IS PUNK" kind of threads?
• It's all liquid friends. Language, culture, race, attitudes. . . you name it. Most of us are only comfortable with solids, so that is how we attempt to view the world. This is right - this is wrong. This is me - this is you. But it is all fluid and it just isn't going to stay in the cardboard boxes you are trying to sort your world into.
• The idea that someone has a "right" to some culture while others don't. Or someone is a poser because they borrowed something. That's a weird idea. Also very funny too. On both sides.
• Because Canada does not have the same huge Black/White divide echoing down from slavery (we've got our own nastiness) we would more likely see somebody identifying with outsider status - poor, new immigrant, first gen kids caught between ___ and Canadian culture, and actual gangs - as legitimate regardless of colour. And I'd imagine that away from North America there's already a major disconnect from US Black/White stuff. It's possible that we will all be beige eventually - we already are online - but since our species does love the Us against Them scenario there will always be division while there are visible differences between people. Which there always will be, given that where differences don't obviously exist, we'll construct them.
• I like my tribe of monkeys
• I think they resolved this issue on a very special "Fresh Prince" back in '92.
• Thing is, drjimmy11, I've seen some forum boards that tell me that maybe you and the people you know are definitely not everybody. Where did those definitions come from in the first link? Nor is everyone in the universe under 25.
• As a species, we certainly do have the tendency to construct differences and even build monuments to them, but we also have the ability to deconstruct them and I think discussions such as these are helpful to that effort. As mercurious noted, "It's all liquid", and I agree. We've just got to stop freezing the stuff.
• I googled trizzle, which had a surprising number of hits, and so far my favorite quote from a trizzle-affiliated website is: Things I like about Upward Bound: Food. Cripes allfuckingmighty, who wasn't giving this poor child food before he got to camp?
• My .02, it's all about marketing. It's all about capturing and formulizing the ethos and pathos, but never the logos. Forget the social, cultural, economic, or spiritual underpinnings of the target "culture." Just crystallize the essense and you have a manufactured theme. It's all about distillation and repurpose. The revolution has become the product.
• Heh...'trizzle' means 'tree' in the Snoopified "Hey you kids" thing. Comes from a Jello ad back in the day in Canada and elsewhere? where Bill Cosby is yelling at some kids to get out of a Jello Tree which was a big old fake tree with all this fruit made out of Jello hanging off it.
• The revolution has become the product The resolution will not be televised.
• Amen, MJ.
• ok, based on personal experience: when I was in high school (89-93) it was no big deal that a lot of people, of all races, liked hip hop- and my school was as suburban and un-hip as can be. Since then it has only gotten more popular. I'm not saying there's no such thing as a "whigger", and some people might think they're posers or whatever. I'm saying the idea of hip hop music as "black" is very antiquated- it's the most popular music among youth of all colors. There's numbers somewhere to back that up but I dont feel like finding them... (I'm sure there are still places where a white kid liking hip hop would be shocking- very very small towns or Mormon communities maybe...) ps I read those definitions and found them to apprently be based on watching "Malibu's most wanted" and def comedy jam. they all invoke the stereotype of the rich white boy "frontin'" -- as if no white person could ever like hip hop just because he liked it or lived in a mixed-race area where it was the music he heard the most. I certainly knew these people in school (we called them "yo's", see my first comment), but they werent the ignorant spoiled stereotypes in the definitions. They were kids who happened to like hip hop. pps also, everyone under 25 hired me as their spokesmen last year. I answered an ad on "the craiglist," which is a hip "site" on that "internet" they enjoy so such
• I'm saying the idea of hip hop music as "black" is very antiquated So is racism. Doesn't mean it's spontaneously vanished.
• I remember voting for drjimmy11. Yep, sure do! *giggle* This is a cool thread,btw.
• But, is it wrong for the originating culture to take credit for starting something like rap? As far as I know, black culture in the US was the source of blues and jazz, and, while we're at it, Afro-Cuban rhythms. They may not own them anymore,but should't they be proud of their spark? I think it's sad to see "neighborhoods" go away in this country. Those who still keep the faith with their origins, no matter how many generations ago, contribute something to the mix. Recognizing that an ethnic group contributed something more interesting what than the European settlers brought with them in the 16th century does not strike me as insulting. Give credit where credit is due - if it weren't for the admixture of cultures from around the world, we'd probably still be dancing the gavotte, eating boiled beef, and thinking that "politically correct" means paying homage to a monarchy.
• What is black culture?
• Afro-Cuban rhythms Chano Pozo, a Cuban, got this one going in the States.
• It's part of a bigger idea, namely how much of our identity is in our heads and how much comes from others looking at us and deciding who we are based on the identity signifiers in their heads. Then, when you have a certain percentage of the base information about what those signifiers are coming from media sources that, increasingly, the entire world has access to, it becomes a bit of a free-for-all. I wonder that, as some identity signifiers become more and more dilute (We are the World; We are Hip Hop) there won't be a redirect/backlash into defining identity much more strongly and becoming far more militant as to who's in and who's out.
• ...about whether Italians were White or not. Melaninily? Yes. But where it really matters - the food - an emphatic, mayonnaise-and-white-bread-is-not-appropriate-as-a-meal no. (I kid.) I won't even enter the discussion, since I am Child of the Suburbs #24793. I feel guilty, though, when I find that I like a hip-pop (...happy?) or old-school R&B song here or there. Like I'm not allowed to like it. Which is kind of odd, I guess. I'm not English, either, and yet I love half a dozen English bands without a twinge of that I-don't-have-the-right-cred-to-listen-to-this cultural piracy. Turned around, this would sound awful, so I don't understand why it comes off that way. Liberal guilt? I don't even know. Hm.
• "I feel guilty, though, when I find that I like a hip-pop (...happy?) or old-school R&B song here or there. Like I'm not allowed to like it. Which is kind of odd, I guess." And that's kinda sad because music belongs to everyone. I love hip hop music (old school stuff like Public Enemy and KRS-One and I just found out about The Last Poets) but some people believe this white chick shouldn't enjoy it. Luckily I don't buy into that.
• Beige? I thought we all turned grey.
• Oooops, try the video in the lower right hand corner. I suck, I'm new at this.
• I like that vid clip, grover96. Grey! It goes with everything!
• If you like The Last Poets, give Gil Scott-Heron a shot.
• A friend loaned me CD of some of Gil Scott-Heron's work just this past week and I've really been enjoying it. "Whitey On The Moon", "Inner City Blues" and a bunch of others are terrific. There's so much great music in the world it just knocks me out.
• Coming up tomorrow on MonkeyFilter: Uncle Toms!!! That's right, you know the type -- black people who refuse to act black! Tune in tomorrow for insight into these freaks!
• It's possible that we will all be beige eventually More a golden brown. I'm the future of the human race. Someday everyone will be a mix of black, white asian and native american.
• I always thought we'd wind up some shade of grey, so golden brown is hugely better.
• Tune in tomorrow for insight into these freaks! Nobody's trying to make anyone out to be a freak. If trying to figure out how we tick is a bad thing, we are all supremely fucked.
• I always thought we'd wind up some shade of grey, so golden brown is hugely better Well, I was sort of a pasty grey when I was born. Then my parents got me out into the sun. =)
• I was purplish, with orange hair. Yeeesh! Things have improved since then, thankfully.
• Point was that discussion about white kids "acting black" is seen as interesting topic. Discussion about black kids "acting white" is seen as racist.
• As a white guy, people have long told me I "act Inuit".
• grover96's comment reminded me of an Andres Serrano [of the Piss Christ fame] exhibit I saw; a series of photographs he took at a NYC morgue. Gruesome as it was, there was profound depth to many of the images. One photo in particular Jane Doe Killed by Police [possibly NSFW, or those faint at sight of a corpse] was especially enlightening. Below the life-size photo was a an excerpt from an interview with Mr. Serrano: "You know, there was a woman that I once photographed. The image is titled, “Jane Doe Killed by Police.” And basically, this is a woman who had been in a stolen car. Some shots were fired. The police fired some shots, killed her and the driver got away. So she was never identified. So when I got to the … when I got to photograph her, she had been in the morgue for two months already. And she’s a brown-skinned woman, but there’s white skin underneath the black skin. And I asked the doctor about that. And he said to me, he said, “Yeah,” he said, “there’s white skin underneath the black skin.” And he explained to me that once he had a … a teacher who explained … who took a really thin slice of skin off of a body and explained to his students that that was the thickness of racism." Under the top epidermal layer you see, all us humanz appear the same... Dunno, it was a defining moment for me...
• As a white guy, people have long told me I "act Inuit". Well y'all better hold up frontin' that narwhal shit and beluga yourself right out the igloo, hear? ...too much Kung Faux last night...
• M.I.A. is a wicked mix up on everything; Galang, Hombre, Sunshowers, Bingo, and Amazon are all great.