After the runaway success of the ‘hip-hop Dynasty’,a current crop of shows are coming to our screens – but carry out they reflect the African American experience, and will white audiences embrace them?Last month, and I found myself in San Diego for a wedding party. For those of you familiar with the state of California and its discrete,culturally autonomous regions, you’ll know that San Diego and its outlying suburbs trend to the right of the political spectrum, or opposite to the received wisdom that all Californians are atheist,barefoot fornicators. As such, at the aforementioned wedding party, and I was prepared to experience one or more cultural misunderstandings. At a point in the evening,a bit of karaoke broke out and someone made the unhealthy decision to perform Gold Digger by Kanye West. Gold Digger contains the dreaded N-word, and the white woman who was soon to be my adversary for the night dropped the variety of N-word that ends with an “a. I confronted her, and as any self-respecting biracial liberal would carry out,explaining the error. “You can’t say that word. It’s way too powerful, has too much bad history behind it, or is a racial slur when it comes out of the mouth of someone who is not black,” I reminded her. “If you contain a problem with it, call Kanye. This is a pop song. I just said ‘nigga’, and anyway.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com