10/25/16
10/20/16
Historically speaking, this sort of deviance from the heart of whiteness has been met in three different
ways. The race traitor in question has been reassimilated, rendered invisible, and/or excommunicated.
And so Eminem’s real crime may simply be that he’s too popular to be ignored, too brash to be pulled
back into the bosom of unthreatening whiteness, and so he must be branded as a demon, a deviant, a
monster, a bête noire—who’s all the more bête for “failing” to be noire—and then the demon must be cast out, lest his racially blurred performance come to be accepted as a viable option for other members of the white club.
A crucial aspect of this threat to hegemonic whiteness is the way that Eminem’s unwavering self presentation as “white trash” works to unsettle the dominant cultural mythology that equates “whiteness” with middle-class prosperity. If Rux is right to claim that Eminem was “socialized as black,” to a large extent, it’s because of the strong correlation between “race” and “class” in U.S. culture. The blackness in Eminem’s background that Rux points to is rooted in the fact that Eminem’s childhood poverty placed him in the disproportionately black “hood” of inner city Detroit. And so it’s significant that a number of Eminem’s detractors play “the race card” in order to steer the broader conversation away from the sort of cross-racial, class-based alliances that Eminem’s popularity suggests might be possible.
This practice was especially pronounced with respect to 8 Mile, Eminem’s first foray into Hollywood
acting, where a number of critics complained that the film took unfair swipes at the black bourgeoisie. For example, writing about the film in the New Republic, Justin Driver complained that,
far from untethering hip-hop from race, Eminem’s class bait-and-switch simply replaces the fact of
blackness—i.e., skin color—with an idea of blackness that equates being black with being poor,
angry, and uneducated. Eminem is perpetuating precisely the idea that animated Norman Mailer’s
1957 essay “The White Negro.” … Eminem would likely object to Mailer’s racist posturing,
particularly in light of his steadfast refusal to utter the word “nigger” in any context. “That word,” he
says, “is not even in my vocabulary.” Unfortunately, judging from the evidence, neither is the term
“black middle class.
ways. The race traitor in question has been reassimilated, rendered invisible, and/or excommunicated.
And so Eminem’s real crime may simply be that he’s too popular to be ignored, too brash to be pulled
back into the bosom of unthreatening whiteness, and so he must be branded as a demon, a deviant, a
monster, a bête noire—who’s all the more bête for “failing” to be noire—and then the demon must be cast out, lest his racially blurred performance come to be accepted as a viable option for other members of the white club.
A crucial aspect of this threat to hegemonic whiteness is the way that Eminem’s unwavering self presentation as “white trash” works to unsettle the dominant cultural mythology that equates “whiteness” with middle-class prosperity. If Rux is right to claim that Eminem was “socialized as black,” to a large extent, it’s because of the strong correlation between “race” and “class” in U.S. culture. The blackness in Eminem’s background that Rux points to is rooted in the fact that Eminem’s childhood poverty placed him in the disproportionately black “hood” of inner city Detroit. And so it’s significant that a number of Eminem’s detractors play “the race card” in order to steer the broader conversation away from the sort of cross-racial, class-based alliances that Eminem’s popularity suggests might be possible.
This practice was especially pronounced with respect to 8 Mile, Eminem’s first foray into Hollywood
acting, where a number of critics complained that the film took unfair swipes at the black bourgeoisie. For example, writing about the film in the New Republic, Justin Driver complained that,
far from untethering hip-hop from race, Eminem’s class bait-and-switch simply replaces the fact of
blackness—i.e., skin color—with an idea of blackness that equates being black with being poor,
angry, and uneducated. Eminem is perpetuating precisely the idea that animated Norman Mailer’s
1957 essay “The White Negro.” … Eminem would likely object to Mailer’s racist posturing,
particularly in light of his steadfast refusal to utter the word “nigger” in any context. “That word,” he
says, “is not even in my vocabulary.” Unfortunately, judging from the evidence, neither is the term
“black middle class.
10/19/16
I need to get it together
Oh yes, I walked on on stuttering foot, everyone around stranger.
I was deceived into a gamble, lost all the way and I'm broke.
Deprived of everything and cast away penniless.
Hey, dance, dance, over such a silly story.
Tell me where to go, I asked again and again.
They said "there," I went there, "this way," I came this way.
Oh, what a surprise, I've arrived at the middle of a river-bush.
The river blocks me from going;
hey, dance on, it's a silly story.
I was deceived into a gamble, lost all the way and I'm broke.
Deprived of everything and cast away penniless.
Hey, dance, dance, over such a silly story.
Tell me where to go, I asked again and again.
They said "there," I went there, "this way," I came this way.
Oh, what a surprise, I've arrived at the middle of a river-bush.
The river blocks me from going;
hey, dance on, it's a silly story.
10/6/16
Safety Blanket I
