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Title : Racial harmony, circa 1986: Everybody, especially Lou Reed, sings "Soul Man."
link : Racial harmony, circa 1986: Everybody, especially Lou Reed, sings "Soul Man."
Racial harmony, circa 1986: Everybody, especially Lou Reed, sings "Soul Man."
I ran across that this morning because the Jessica Krug story (see previous post) got me thinking about the old movie "Soul Man," which I've never seen, but remember very well, because it was about affirmative action in law school, in which a white guy misidentifies himself as black so he can qualify for a black-only scholarship at Harvard Law School. The movie is named after the old Sam and Dave song, and Sam participated in that remake with Lou Reed — known for, among other things, the song "I Wanna Be Black"* — of the already-old song.
The use of blackface in the movie was criticized at the time, most notably by Spike Lee. The actress Rae Dawn Chong, who played the main character's love interest, said: "It was only controversial because Spike Lee made a thing of it. He'd never seen the movie and he just jumped all over it... If you watch the movie, it's really making white people look stupid… I always tried to be an actor who was doing a part that was a character versus what I call 'blackting,' or playing my race, because I knew that I would fail because I was mixed. I was the black actor for sure, but I didn't lead with my epidermis, and that offended people like Spike Lee, I think."
Anyway, it has always been a terrible idea for a white person to adopt a black identity to get ahead within higher education. That was a subject of a Hollywood movie in 1986. It's amazing that real people so recently have attempted this sort of fraud. Jessica Krug has outed herself (perhaps because she would have been outed by others), but it makes you wonder how many other people are out there who've furthered their careers by pretending to be black.
I'm writing this post mostly because I was struck by the racial healing acted out in that music video — as if getting white people to sing "I'm a soul man" could bring us all together. To quote another Lou Reed song: You know, those were different times.
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* Listen to the song "I Wanna Be Black" here. Read the lyrics, here. They're quite shockingly racist, but the key line, for comprehension purposes is, "Oh, I don't wanna be a fucked up/Middle class college student no more." The annotation at the lyrics link says:
"This song [is] described by Ann Powers as 'a proto-rap unspooling of racist stereotypes that makes fun of white hipsters by forcing a deep wallow in ignorance.' Though racist, this song attempts to be a satire of bored young white men in America and their attitudes and beliefs around black men. Whether it passes Poe’s Law or not, is up for debate."What's Poe's Law? Wikipedia says:
"Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied."I guess you "pass" Poe's Law when you're clear enough that you are not the thing you are parodying. So, Lou Reed was singing all these racist things but then he let us know that he's really making fun of the "fucked-up, middle class [white] college student" who fantasizes about acquiring a black identity.
"I Wanna Be Black" is from the album "Street Hassle," released in 1978.
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I ran across that this morning because the Jessica Krug story (see previous post) got me thinking about the old movie "Soul Man," which I've never seen, but remember very well, because it was about affirmative action in law school, in which a white guy misidentifies himself as black so he can qualify for a black-only scholarship at Harvard Law School. The movie is named after the old Sam and Dave song, and Sam participated in that remake with Lou Reed — known for, among other things, the song "I Wanna Be Black"* — of the already-old song.
The use of blackface in the movie was criticized at the time, most notably by Spike Lee. The actress Rae Dawn Chong, who played the main character's love interest, said: "It was only controversial because Spike Lee made a thing of it. He'd never seen the movie and he just jumped all over it... If you watch the movie, it's really making white people look stupid… I always tried to be an actor who was doing a part that was a character versus what I call 'blackting,' or playing my race, because I knew that I would fail because I was mixed. I was the black actor for sure, but I didn't lead with my epidermis, and that offended people like Spike Lee, I think."
Anyway, it has always been a terrible idea for a white person to adopt a black identity to get ahead within higher education. That was a subject of a Hollywood movie in 1986. It's amazing that real people so recently have attempted this sort of fraud. Jessica Krug has outed herself (perhaps because she would have been outed by others), but it makes you wonder how many other people are out there who've furthered their careers by pretending to be black.
I'm writing this post mostly because I was struck by the racial healing acted out in that music video — as if getting white people to sing "I'm a soul man" could bring us all together. To quote another Lou Reed song: You know, those were different times.
__________________
* Listen to the song "I Wanna Be Black" here. Read the lyrics, here. They're quite shockingly racist, but the key line, for comprehension purposes is, "Oh, I don't wanna be a fucked up/Middle class college student no more." The annotation at the lyrics link says:
"This song [is] described by Ann Powers as 'a proto-rap unspooling of racist stereotypes that makes fun of white hipsters by forcing a deep wallow in ignorance.' Though racist, this song attempts to be a satire of bored young white men in America and their attitudes and beliefs around black men. Whether it passes Poe’s Law or not, is up for debate."What's Poe's Law? Wikipedia says:
"Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied."I guess you "pass" Poe's Law when you're clear enough that you are not the thing you are parodying. So, Lou Reed was singing all these racist things but then he let us know that he's really making fun of the "fucked-up, middle class [white] college student" who fantasizes about acquiring a black identity.
"I Wanna Be Black" is from the album "Street Hassle," released in 1978.
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