On Tuesday we discussed consumerism and subcultures, does it really affect the youths and are big companies really the bad guys. Are they really "exploiting" subcultures? My group did plan to divide the class and make you guys debate on whether consumerism was bad or good for society but we ran out of time. If you guys want to answers the remaining questions we didn't get to, please feel free to. I, however, want to bring up the interesting topic we touched on in class involving Common, Eazy-E, and race relations in commercials.
So I have a theory of why there was more controversy over Common being invited to the White House than Eazy-E. Maybe it's because Eazy-E is an image of what white people see black people as. Maybe he reaffirmed white people's perspective of black people (as "thugs"). Maybe Common was a threat to white people's perspective of black people because he is a conscious rapper and he didn't fit their subconscious views of a black person. Maybe this is also an explanation of why white people bastardized hip-hop's original ideals; because if a marginalized group starts threatening the social hierarchy, their message and ideals are manipulated to portray something the dominate culture would like to see (a reason why white people dominate the hip hop industry). When I asked "Why did hip hop become the initial vessel for cool?" An answer I got was because hip hop already praised consumerism (I am paraphrasing). That is valid of course, but now I think part of it is because black culture in general is already being manipulated in media. Stemming from that idea, let's talk about that Common Gap video and the statement that "Common isn't black" so therefore his representation in the advertisement doesn't really mean anything. I don't want to refute the point that Gap used a light skinned black person because it would be received better by the audience, that's probably a reason Common was used, I want to talk about the problem of saying that light skinned black people aren't black. This raises the question of what you think "black" is. Are you less "black" if you have a lighter skin? Obviously light skinned black people are often more accepted than dark skinned black people, but that doesn't make them any less black and saying that it does is honestly a bit offensive. To summarize, what I'm trying to say is: Dominant culture frames the media they view to fit their ideals and reaffirm pre-existing perceptions; light skinned black people are often more accepted than dark skinned black people and therefore used in commercials but it's a problem to claim that light skinned black people are less "black". In fact, here's a video that says it better than I can:
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