Uncle Tom: The Originality Of Artistry In American Today

In this book, Jeffrey Ogbar talks about the beginning of rap, where it started, some of the artists of this genre and some of the controversial topics the artists rap about. He also talks about the usage of the N word as well as men calling women the B word. In the first chapter of the book, Ogbar contextualizes the debate by talking about the history of the minstrel figure in American popular culture, relying mainly on the work of W. T. Lhamon and Patricia Hill Collins. He talks about how the earliest manifestations of hip-hop music in the 1970s came from the Black Power movement and often included direct rejections of minstrel tropes for example in the artist KRS-One’s song “My Philosophy”. Before going on a chronological study of the internal debates that many rappers have over their relationships with the minstrel trope, Ogbar finds the source of the debate in early twentieth-century black writers’, mainly W.E.B Du Bois, interest in elevating many portrayals of African Americans in the arts, versus Harlem Renaissance writers’ rejection of the emphasis on

The identity of the black man is the most crucial element attacked by black masculinity. Stemming from a limited variety of acceptable self expression, black masculinity emphasizes the need for an overly tough outer appearance while internally suppressing emotions of fear and sadness. These notions are particularly vivid in mainstream hip hop culture. In Byron Hurt’s Hip hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes, Hurt sits down with some of the industries most respected artist who attest that “anything nonhood will dilute [their] toughness.” Nonhood suggesting outwardly signs of affection, comfortability in the uprise of woman, and the dialogue and communication between Black brothers both verbal and nonverbal. These

The famous author Chesnutt presents “The Passing of Grandison” to demonstrate that racism destroys the intelligence of southern white men. He does this to express his conception of the negativity revolved around racism. Chesnutt’s novella “The Sheriffs Children” relates to “The Passing of Grandison” by presenting a southern white man having a mixed child and the lack of education for most racist southern white men. Chesnutt presents racism in “The Sheriffs Children” by exhibiting the quickness of the town to lynch the black man for supposedly murdering a respected white citizen. Chesnutt also presents racism in “The Passing of Grandison” by demonstrating the master's degrading acts towards Grandison by surmising his caliber of education as nonexistent. He utilizes these two examples to emphasize racism clouding the southern white men’s intelligence. Chesnutt also presents sex between slave owners and slaves in both short stories as degrading because of the white slave owners view of slaves as property. Chesnutt demonstrates the shamefulness of raping a slave to reveal primitive forcefulness of sex and lack of respect the southern white men had for African Americans. Chesnutt reveals the hatred it would take for a father to sell his own child. Chesnutt presents these events to reveal a southern white slave owners action as negative because the injustice the African Americans went through. Chesnutt presents all images and examples of racism to reveal the face of adversity for

As time continues, the boy struggles with what to make of himself and his future. His musical aspirations begin to hold more weight in his decisions, but are still rather questionable. Whenever he seems to be making the steps to pave his future, he seems to continuously be redirected from his intended path. His inability to fully strive for a profession can be directly related to his inability to choose how he wants to be viewed, or rather who he wants to be viewed as, by society; he lacks the confidence to potentially make the “wrong decision.” The narrator becomes increasingly likely to make a career of music, and is greatly inspired by spirituals he hears at a church service. As he leaves to “settle down to work” (Johnson 133) , he witnesses a gruesome and cruel scene. A black man was to be hanged in town, but instead a white mob burns the black man alive. The narrator is terrified and scarred, committing to live his life as a white man. Shame is what the young boy now feels, for whether he lives as a white man, he is indeed a black man. Shame is responsible for the choice he made, because he wished not to be “identified with a people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals" (Johnson 139).

McBride begins the essay by telling the readers of his nightmare. He once feared that his daughter would arrive home one day with a stereotyped rapper husband with “ mouthful of gold teeth, a do-rag on his head… and a thug attitude” (McBride 1). He came to realize that he in fact, hip-hop, a genre that he once didn’t believe was music, had become one of the most known genres in the world. The speaker first heard his first rap song at a college party in Harlem in 1980. The jazz lover he was, cringed at the rap music he claimed to be so poorly thought out and written. For the next 26 years of his life, he went out of his way to avoid hip-hop music all together, as if It was never there in the first place.

A perfect example of in the piece of how African-Americans are vilified comes at the end of the fourth stanza with the lines "grow a natural and practice vandalism/these are useful games (some say a skill even learned)." These two lines show how the black male, especially the young black male is viewed as nothing more than a thief skilled in the art of crime. Further evidence to the fact is found in the line "I'm told it has full instructions of how to siphon gas and fill a bottle," which is again alludes to H. Rap Brown, his cry of ‘Burn Baby Burn' and the use of pipe bombs and the like to demand equality.

Another consequence that result from this lack of “race consciousness” is his interaction with black music and culture. As Robert B. Stepto argues in “Lost in a Quest,” the ECM is “caught…in a kind of illiteracy that argues that technique can pass for art…[mistaking] the modulation and exploitation of race rituals along the color line for proper relations between artist and audience” (368). Additionally, Stepto argues that the ECM, “alienated from the deepest bonds of his race…learns to play music without reference to who is ‘in the other room’” (368). Ragtime, as Edward A. Berlin states in Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History, derived from “the ‘coon song,’ a Negro dialect song frequently, but not always, of an offensively denigrating nature” (205). As someone who has “dreams of bringing glory and honor to the Negro race” (Johnson 26), it is very problematic for the narrator not understand the cultural and racial significance of the music he wants to play. For himself, he fails to gain any real understanding and he becomes, as Stepto says, “a

August Wilson was a famous and influential playwright who wrote about the African American experience and conflicts with the White world. Although he may be argued as one of the greatest playwrights in America, I myself have only heard of his work once when my seventh grade English class read Fences, a play about a man and his son dealing with dealing with racism while also dealing with their own conflict when the son wants to follow in the steps of his father and become a professional athlete. I had honestly forgotten all about that one play I read eight years ago. Wilson’s name was barely among the many playwrights studied in my latter years. This could be because of the content of his plays. Much of Wilson’s work examines the negative aspects of being African American in America such as racism and poverty. When we read about African American literature in school, we read about empowerment and pride. It is ironic how students study White writers who tell stories like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Heart of Darkness with mistreated African American characters, but barely study those same stories written by Black authors, poets, and playwrights. Because African American literature was not glorified in the past, specifically speaking of a time before the Harlem Renaissance, it may take time for certain works of African descendants to be glorified at the same level as those of White writers, especially if their peak wasn’t during the Renaissance.

My favorite era is the Contemporary Era. In history, the Contemporary Era is a time that had profound changes the modernized the identity of the development of many new cities. In the early modern era, people and cities grew through the spirit of modernism throughout all over the world. People were going away with cultural traditions and starting a new civilization future for the twentieth century. The founding on new discoveries cause new foundation trends to be expressed with a new understanding in believing and living.

The 1920s were a time of great prosperity and revitalization. This decade gave way to many great social milestones for every class of people. From the limits for immigration to the boom of the auto industry American society was drastically altered. Issues such as foreign immigration,prohibition, the Ku Klux Klan ,evolution, women’s roles, and race were the focus of the populus and drove politics within the nation. Art played a major role in how the black community expressed their new found sense of culture. Painting has always been a way for someone to portrait their ideas.

The image of musicians playing through “bloodstained reeds” illustrates the dedication people have through the hardships of life and the the useage of jazz to express oneself, “screaming out for help through a horn” shows how blacks had to wear the mask in order to be successful in a society. During musical performances was one time the mask could come off and they were able to say what they were feeling with their instruments. Komunyakaa writes in a way that allows the reader to infer that jazz is used as a distraction, He writes how he remembers an interaction with a assumably white woman who thinks he is going to try to steal her bag when they walk past each other near the dark theatre. Right after that sentence, a jazz term is placed alone “tremolo” meaning a rapid reiteration of a not, this word represents how he has to try not to think about the horrible situations he is put in because of his race.

Singing as a form of communication and as an expression of emotions was deeply rooted in African American culture. Slaves who were shipped across the Atlantic in the 1700’s used song to communicate during the several-month-long journeys. Slave songs were used to pass down history through generations and ensured the survival of African American culture. Black slaves worked and lived in horrendous conditions and were constantly oppressed by blacks. Slaves had no rights or freedoms and living their culture in the form of song in a foreign land oppressed by foreigners was key to the survival of their culture and legacy for future generations. Claude McKay lived during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920’s, which was decades after the civil war and after slavery was abolished in America. After the reconstruction, the Jim Crow laws were laws that enforced racial segregation and blacks second-class status. During the post reconstruction, thousands of blacks were lynched primarily in the South and were oppressed by whites. In Claude McKay’s “Outcast,” the difficulty of being black is unceasing oppression by whites as seen through their inability to connect with their past roots, their treatment by White’s as sub-human, and their belief that they have lost their humanity.

In reading Djanet Sears’ Harlem Duet, and listening to Public Enemy’s song “Fight The Power”, one can immediately notice the significance of similarities. Both texts take a stand to racism and all aspects of inequality within it. Although Djanet Sears and Public Enemy express their views on the cultural conflicts of race, opportunity for freedom and political authority/leadership inequality in these two different mediums, play and song, they both share the same message of discrimination and a demand for amendment. In making this critical analysis of how these texts use aspects of their medium to comment on social problems and cultural conflicts, this paper will first discuss the similarities in views of racism within both texts, and how the

There were both similarities and differences between the White and African American artist’s interpretations of this time period revealed through their art. Both artists showed versatility in style and subject matter. Additionally, both the White and African American artists seemed to recognize that there was a problem, or at least that White people and African Americans were seen and treated differently. However, there were far more works of art done by White artists than African American artists. Furthermore, the White artists tended to draw or paint the African Americans in their paintings with faces of anguish or desperation.

In those years, racism was a strong and violent issue that not only referred to women but also to minorities such as black people, gays and single mothers. Today people are still struggle with these very issues. Racism in America is proving that this essay is sadly very relevant today and this minorities group reacts in different ways but always similar to Lorde’s description of poetry as a form of creativity as a class issue, thinking that in the 80’s poetry was the most economical way of communication. In recent years there has been an explosion of creativity by minority groups in form of: street-art, rap music, and