White musicians and "artistic" use of the N-word: A Discussion and Social History

Please read this before posting

Since this has inspired such great debate in the CocoRosie thread, I think it's appropriate to have a discussion about this history of this phenomenon
--When did this begin?
--Was this ever "OK"?
--If CocoRosie is guilty of racial insensitivity does that mean so is Patti Smith and John Lennon and Elvis Costello?
--Was this more acceptable in the 70s than the 00s? If so, why?
--What does it say about a white artist willing to do this? Is that same trait in John Lennon as CocoRosie?

IMPORTANT RULES FOR THIS THREAD: PLEASE READ
If you guys can't play nice, I'm gonna have forks delete the whole thing

A) Please try to keep typing the actual word to a minimum.
I know we're all adults and there's context and the first amendment and whatever. But we're also all friends in a community, and I think we should just err on the side of courtesy to any people who might be offended or uneasy at seeing a thread with the n-word posted 80 billion times, just like I wouldn't post 800 pictures of a swastika.

B) Please no actual racist songs
This is about ARTISTIC use, so keep shit like Skrewdr1ver and Dav1d Allen C0e out of here. Showing off your working knowledge of actual racist music is just wink-wink bullshit and the thread doesn't need it.

C) Play nice

Here are some of the big ones of the top of my head. Feel free to add.
1. John Lennon and Plastic Ono Band - "Woman Is The N---- Of The World"
2. Elvis Costello - "Oliver's Army"
3. Patti Smith - "Rock And Roll N----"
4. Frank Zappa - "You Are What You Is"
5. Jane's Addiction - "Whores"
6. CocoRosie - "Jesus Loves Me"

'Holiday In Cambodia' was probably my introduction to this uh phenomenon

7. Guns 'n' Roses - "One in a Million"

"I was pissed off about some black people that were trying to rob me. I wanted to insult those particular black people. I didn't want to support racism." - Axl Rose in Rolling Stone

8. Marilyn Manson - "Irresponsible Hate Anthem"
9. Dead Kennedys - "Holiday In Cambodia"

Randy Newman!

10. The Dicks - Hate The Police
11/12. Gun Club - Black Train AND For The Love Of Ivy

More Axl in Rolling Stone:

The lyrics have incited a lot of protest, so let's go over them line by line. Let's start with one of the verses, "Police and niggers, that's right/Get outta my way/Don't need to buy none/ Of your gold chains today."

I used words like police and niggers because you're not allowed to use the word nigger. Why can black people go up to each other and say, "Nigger," but when a white guy does it all of a sudden it's a big put-down. I don't like boundaries of any kind. I don't like being told what I can and what I can't say. I used the word nigger because it's a word to describe somebody that is basically a pain in your life, a problem. The word nigger doesn't necessarily mean black. Doesn't John Lennon have a song "Woman Is the Nigger of the World"? There's a rap group, N.W.A., Niggers with Attitude. I mean, they're proud of that word. More power to them. Guns N' Roses ain't bad. . . . N.W.A. is baad! Mr. Bob Goldthwait said the only reason we put these lyrics on the record was because it would cause controversy and we'd sell a million albums. Fuck him! Why'd he put us in his skit? We don't just do something to get the controversy, the press.

xhuxk wrote on here a while back about looking at 'One in A Million' as the equiv to 'Los Angeles' by X, only a few years on and a bit more poodle-y, which I thought was interesting but didn't really buy cos of, you know, Axl, and his words, and deeds

How the hell did I miss that Jane's Addiction song? Oh, it's on that first album that only listened to twice before just putting "Pigs In Zen," "Jane Says" and "Sympathy" on repeat, that's why.

Fucking Perry Farrell.

xp: "Holiday In Cambodia"?????? okay I am thinking I should have paid a LOT more attention to lyrics when I was in high school... although in context that one actually makes sense and is defensible in so far as it's being used to build a particular viewpoint that the rest of the song is knocking down

oh yeah and thank you for reminding me why I hated Axl so much

Axl is such a dummy

0MG G00GLE F0R N1GGA AND F1ND DAV1D ALLEN C0E

I used words like police and niggers because you're not allowed to use the word nigger. [...] Mr. Bob Goldthwait said the only reason we put these lyrics on the record was because it would cause controversy and we'd sell a million albums. Fuck him! Why'd he put us in his skit? We don't just do something to get the controversy, the press.

so did you forget what you JUST SAID, you massive douchebag

xhuxk wrote on here a while back about looking at 'One in A Million' as the equiv to 'Los Angeles' by X, only a few years on and a bit more poodle-y, which I thought was interesting but didn't really buy cos of, you know, Axl, and his words, and deeds

― heywood jabulani (DJ Mencap), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 3:38 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

yeah. the bending-over-backwards critical theory deebs on the cocorosie thread reminded me of this

wasn't there a bit of a kerfuffle about j-lo singing "nigga" in a song p diddy wrote for her (can't remember which one atm) while they were dating? not that she's white, i guess.

1. in theory, I don't think there's anything forbidden when it comes to art
2. doing things for shock value alone is probably the easiest way in the world to make bad art

xpost to HI DERE

Yeah, I would GUESS the Biafra/Dicks/Randy Newman version of "I'm paraphrasing/quoting a racist character in my song who says this" is probably the most defensible... But then it's pretty much Tarantino in Pulp Fiction slippery slope shit

Smith/Costello/Lennon is more like "playing with semantics"

Perry Farrell/CocoRosie is more like I'M FASCINATED WITH RACE

doing things for shock value alone is probably the easiest way in the world to make bad art

This should be posted on billboards all over Los Angeles and New York.

Really? Anything? / xxpost

Slash weighing in on "One in a Million" in a Rolling Stone interview from 1991:

When Axl first came up with the song and really wanted to do it, I said I didn't think it was very cool... I don't regret doing 'One in a Million,' I just regret what we've been through because of it and the way people have perceived our personal feelings.

Perry pretty much set the standard for CocoRosie since he
1. Says it in "Whores"
2. Covered Sly's "Don't Call Me N---, Whitey" live
3. Has that Porno For Pyros song that begins "Ever since the riots, all I ever wanted was a black girlfriend"

Perry Farrell also had the whole "Black Girlfriend" thing with Porno for Pyros. He didn't use the N-word, but it's some cringey stuff.

Ever since the riots
All I really wanted
Was a black girlfriend
They don't play around
They're hard enough
To keep any man in lineb
Thinking of my pale white skin
Thinking of her dark and smooth
She against me
With my black girlfriend
Drivin' thru the 'hood
In my Chevy Nova '62
My arm around my
Little black girl
People on the corner
Looking in my car
Wanna do me
Cos I won't give back
My little black girl

The Randy Newman song would be "Rednecks." (Unless he had more.)

And while Whiney is probably right to dismiss David Allan Coe's racist triple-X bootleg material (little of which I've ever heard myself) his actual 1977 country hit "If That Ain't Country" ("trying like the devil to find the lord/working like a n____ for my room and board")is arguably more a grey area (not that it wasn't trying to pull certain strings itself, but then pretty much every song on this thread was.)

I've made my case about "One In A Million"; no need to do it again. But there is no "bending over backwards" in comparing it to that X song.

Patti Smith's reasoning seems pretty stupid ("they've got soul!"/"don't you have a sense of humor?"). Here's how she put it in Rolling Stone, 27 July 1978:

Reporter: The other day you said that if anyone was qualified to be a nigger, it was Mick Jagger. How is Mick Jagger qualified to be a nigger?

Smith: On our liner notes I redefined the word nigger as being an artist-mutant that was going beyond gender.

Reporter: I didn’t understand how Mick Jagger has suffered like anyone who grew up in Harlem.

Smith: Suffering don’t make you a nigger. I mean, I grew up poor too. Stylistically, I believe he qualifies. I think Mick Jagger has suffered plenty. He also has a great heart, and I believe, ya know, even in his most cynical
moments, a great love for his children. He’s got a lot of soul. I mean, like, I don’t understand the question. Ya think black people are better than white people or sumpthin’? I was raised with black people. It’s like, I can walk down the street and say to a kid, “Hey nigger.” I don’t have any kind of super-respect or fear of that kind of stuff. When I say statements like that, they’re not supposed to be analyzed, ’cause they’re more like off-the-cuff humorous statements. I do have a sense of humor, ya know, which is sumpthin’ that most people completely wash over when they deal with me. I never read anything where anybody talked about my sense of humor. It’s like, a lot of the stuff I say is true, but it’s supposed to be funny.

Reporter: I just think that people should be allowed to label themselves. If black people want to be called blacks, I call them blacks, just as I would not want to be called honkie.

Smith: What I would think is, a word can become archaic because we progress into the future, so words can be redefined. And I’m not, like, a slob with words, ya know. I don’t mean that, ya know, uh, I don’t, I don’t, wish to, like, um, twist and rend words to my whim. But I do feel words can outlive their usefulness, unless we redefine them. And I’ve said that a lot, ya know, if you’ve been reading my book or liner notes.

i can't really think of any examples of this where using the word seems to justify itself. regardless of whether its there for shock value or to, like, teach us all a lesson about race, or whatever--there is (as far as i can think) no situation where its actually warranted--where the strength of the vision or concept is matched by the words, uh, extratextual power.

i mean i guess what im saying is that it would be really hard to write a song that was so good or groundbreaking or whatever that it could contain what might be (is?) the most "powerful" word in (american) english, at least in terms of immediate, visceral reaction. was someone saying this on the other thread? probably. the word is so big, so weighty, that it tends to just take the whole song down with it.

ugh and the whole thing that both patti and axl try to do (in different directions) where they "redefine" the word--john lennon is kind of guilty of this too, maybe--is so facile and ignorant and just, ugh

interview needs some truffle fries

the elvis costello one is interesting because in the context of the song lyrics it's obviously intended as newman-esque character-based satire but then dude got in trouble later for using the word in reference to james brown and ray charles which maybe kind of retroactively made his use of it in the song less defensible

wow "black girlfriend" is appalling

i like patti smith, but never really knew the context of that song, and that "explanation" of it is about the most idiotic thing i expect to read this week.

the j-lo single was the "i'm real" remix, duh, and it was written by ja rule, not diddy, though the line refers to her relationship w/puff.

lol @ an artist-mutant that was going beyond gender.

Patti Smith said a lot of really stupid things in the 70s (according to the Please Kill Me book)

As far as rappers go, RA The Rugged Man accidentally let one thru in "What The Fuck"

"I say what I want to say, and other people play politics... I honestly don't remember saying that, but I don't even listen to my records.

Oh yeah, there's also the Steve Albini/Nate Katrud (of Urge Overkill's) one-off '80s act Run N____ Run, who did a track called "Pray I Don't Kill You Faggot." Not clear to me how that (or, say, the Gun Club stuff I've heard -- though I like them) would be any less race-baiting (or more "ironic") than the David Allan Coe lyric I quoted above. (That Albini later had a band called "Rapeman," hardy har har, doesn't help.)

i remember reading an interview with patti smith where she talked about the use of N-- in the song rock and roll n--, she was basically defending it as an reclamation of the word, saying that by using it to stand in for those that stand "outside of society" it becomes a more inclusive and positive appropriation of the word. But I mean, how old is this song now? This clearly has not worked, the word retains a unique power in certain racial discourses that is pretty resistant to that sort of dismantling, esp. from outside the context of direct race relations. The fact that the song remains shocking is kindof a testament to the failure of its own ideology (that is: "its just words") I kindof think that for eg. marilyn manson covering it for shock value is weirdly a more honest use of the word and kindof more respectful because its crude attempt at being controversial help to underline the implicit power it retains.

sorry that kindof just got covered

I apparently cut off the rest of the Black Girlfriend lyrics - the verses I missed:

Saw her on the corner
Whre she lived, I asked her
Can you braid my hair?
She and her girlfriends
Laughed at me, said that
It was easy but it'll cost you some
Looking out her window
It's so exciting and foreign
But i'm staying

Do you wanna come on in?
Do you wanna eat some?
Meet my family?
My black girlfriend
My black girlfriend

Listening to it on Spotify right now. It's oof-ier than I even remembered.

Perry pretty much set the standard for CocoRosie since he
2. Covered Sly's "Don't Call Me N---, Whitey" live

I think he recorded it as a duet w/ Ice-T as well?

btw I hope no one thinks this is overstepping bounds as a moderator, but del griffith is banned from this thread and anyone doing similar facile shit will also be banned from the thread; this is an interesting subject and I would rather not see it deleted

Yeah, I would GUESS the Biafra/Dicks/Randy Newman version of "I'm paraphrasing/quoting a racist character in my song who says this" is probably the most defensible... But then it's pretty much Tarantino in Pulp Fiction slippery slope shit

See, I don't really think it's "slippery slope" when it's done either in the context of setting the person saying it up for a massive fall or in the context of painting an undesirable image of the person saying it.

One of the issues I have with a lot of the way it gets employed by people regardless of race is that it's just put out there as empirically whatever the person using it thinks it should be; no one wants to put in the supporting framework around it that you need in order to justify its usage, or if they do it's usually an afterthought. I've never been offended by its use in "Pulp Fiction," largely because it's always occurred in the context of people with decidedly unpleasant sides to their personalities. The big problem with "Whores" is that Perry Farrell is basically equating all black people with weird white people with problems who have either dropped out or been rejected by society by using it like that; it's a wholly stupid way to talk about black people and doesn't even properly describe the people he thinks he's talking about. He thinks he's showing solidarity when in fact he is showing off exactly how condescending and privileged he is. Any "freak" can get a haircut, take out their piercings and wear long sleeves to cover up their tattoos; it's a choice. What choice do the niggers in that song have?

xp: oh my god

"I say what I want to say, and other people play politics... I honestly don't remember saying that, but I don't even listen to my records."

you and everyone else, r.a.

calling Ice-T whitey is just going too far

i find the "we're trying to get people to really think about the word" justification to be really lame - there isn't exactly a shortage of thoughts and information on racial epithets and their history out there, and i definitely don't think that body of work was crying out for cocorosie's contribution to it

Wiki:

In 1979, singer Elvis Costello used nigger in "Oliver's Army", a state-of-the-world-today song inspired by adolescent British Army soldiers on occupation duty in Northern Ireland. Later, the producers of the British talent show Stars in Their Eyes forced a contestant to censor the second-verse lyrics line, ". . . all it takes is one itchy trigger — One more widow, one less white nigger" to the euphemistic ". . . one less white figure".

she was basically defending it as an reclamation of the word, saying that by using it to stand in for those that stand "outside of society" it becomes a more inclusive and positive appropriation of the word

That's kind of like giving yourself a nickname and then insisting that other people start referring to you that way. It never works. The word's meaning is far too large and engrained for one person to write a song about with the hopes of changing the entire world's perception of the word.

I mean, wtf Perry

why not just call the song "Lemme Bone This Black Girl For A Minute" and call it a day

xp: haha uh, actually I very successfully gave myself a nickname, both in college and on the Internet, so I disagree with your analogy

lol

xp And if you're going to talk, say, the Gun Club, seems to me you could go way beyond the actual use of the N-word, and cite as their roots things like Warren Smith's often-covered (by Stray Cats, Alice Cooper, John Prine, etc.) and definitely racially questionable 1957 rockabilly classic "Ubangi Stomp." Every one of those bands knew what they were covering.

then dude got in trouble later for using the word in reference to james brown and ray charles which maybe kind of retroactively made his use of it in the song less defensible

ha yeah I was about to say.

for some reason Lennon's/Ono's and Newman's - and barring the episode referenced above - Costello's usage doesn't reek of stupidity like the others. which is sad, because "One in a Million' is a great fucking song.

Perry pretty much set the standard for CocoRosie since he
2. Covered Sly's "Don't Call Me N---, Whitey" live

I think he recorded it as a duet w/ Ice-T as well?

― heywood jabulani (DJ Mencap), Tuesday, 22 June 2010 15:54 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

During the first Lollapalooza tour, Jane's Addiction brings out Ice-T to perform a rendition of Sly & the Family Stone's "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey (Don't Call Me Whitey, Nigger)". Perry Farrell sings the white part, Ice-T sings the Black part. Black quartet Living Colour comes onstage afterward and bandleader Vernon Reid announces "I'll never be anyone's nigger for entertainment..."

― and what, Tuesday, 25 December 2007 20:53 (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

The 'Black Girlfriend' lyrics read a little like a re-write of 'I Wanna Be Black' by Lou Reed (a song that is both funny, and ironic, and REALLY horrible all at the same time - well done Lou)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2552/3780867344_7ddea7a694.jpg

Dont call me stupid!

"he never really expected anyone to care"

he just accidentally recorded it, distributed that recording to the world, and played it live at thousands of shows!

i doubt nietzche approached that level of self-promotion

though jack nitzsche on the other hand

thousands of shows

Minor Threat played less than 100 shows in their three-year career, actually. Though they were playing "GoBW" all the way up to the end.

0.1 thousands

Grrrrr...fuckin' Ian MacKaye.

let's just agree on millions of shows and call it a day

Discussing Nietzsche in a college German class led to some amazing lols for me, particularly when the conversation veered towards a discussion of selfishness and altruism and I took the position that no one chooses of their own volition to be altruistic because the emotional reward from volunteerism/helping others makes them selfish acts.

People also didn't like it when I kept telling them that, when talking about the Uebermensch, Nietzsche was talking about us.

first line is a classic philosophy 101 challop.

It was a tense class but oh so worth it when the girl who was doing volunteer programs got super mad because she wouldn't let go of "selfish = bad" in an academic conversation divorced from reality.

found this on a mixtape me and lhgoo made in 1986 where everything seemed permissible
plus th record was a dollar at Caldor
and goo had just won lotto
i think we thought wanna be black and black girls by violent femmes and all that fake tranxgression stuff was funny
we were 22
no excuse
and now that my gf is black i dont get away with anything anymore

John Cale - Wilson Joliet
She was so afraid of everything she said
Since her mother told her why once upon a time
There was no rhyme
Before the clock slammed another door
Of the weary hours we were facing a second hand shylock
Shylocked in, in on us

I saw what it had taken
Playing back that old brigade of mine
Everything was dirty, everything was without rhyme
Everything was dirty, everything was without rhyme
Cause me and nigger marched
Yes, me and nigger blasted our way out
Of here just like yesterday

Yesterday's streets were burnt down into shells
Mothers weep while children sleep
Like ancestors in the ground
The misery of nuns lie together like sons
Who do not have the taste for the battle

We are shuffled like a pack of cards in the dead of night
Like lovers below Bataan, below the senses
Cause the senses smell of tears
While we and nigger marched
Blasted our way out of here
Close the door and let's have some private life

"no one chooses of their own volition to be altruistic because the emotional reward from volunteerism/helping others makes them selfish acts."

I volunteered for some pretty unrewarding stuff -- wouldn't necessarily call it altruistic, but in order to be selfish, they would have had to be rewarding on some level and they weren't.
Do you think the girl was mad for trivializing her drudgery, or making it seem like volunteers were help-junkies addicted to helpahol?

what intellectuals are holding ian mackaye in high esteem??!

all the Continental philosophers are nuts about Repeater

they recognize a fuckin jam when they parse one

I volunteered for some pretty unrewarding stuff -- wouldn't necessarily call it altruistic, but in order to be selfish, they would have had to be rewarding on some level and they weren't.
Do you think the girl was mad for trivializing her drudgery, or making it seem like volunteers were help-junkies addicted to helpahol?

― Philip Nunez

the standard argument is that ostensible altruists gain personal (emotional/ego) & social benefits that they seek in a self-interested manner even as they help others. for example, the sense that they are "doing the right thing."

this argument tends to piss people off because, A.) it's smug, and B.) it tricks people into defending positions that they don't actually hold (e.g., that it is possible to be entirely unselfish, or that altruism's moral precepts are invalidated if any conceivable benefit accrues to the altruist).

I do kind of hold B) though -- not to the extent that an altruistic enterprise is invalid, but it sure taints it a little. It's pretty disheartening to look up stats on a charity and see personnel drawing hefty salaries (though it's probably a lebron james situation where they bring in more $ to the franchise than they earn)

Hey, let's talk about how Siegel and Shuster (Jews!) created Superman as a Nietzsche-inspired supervillain until true Nietzsche-inspired supervillain Hitler made explicit the notion of the ubermensch, causing Siegel and Shuster to switch their selfish supermensch into a selfless supermensch for good!

What was this thread about again?

if you want to discuss salary issues with charities ... let's not do it in this thread.

I do kind of hold B) though -- not to the extent that an altruistic enterprise is invalid, but it sure taints it a little. It's pretty disheartening to look up stats on a charity and see personnel drawing hefty salaries (though it's probably a lebron james situation where they bring in more $ to the franchise than they earn)

― Philip Nunez

well, there's a lot of wiggle room in the gap between "any conceivable benefit" and "a salary in the high sixes."

but what sarah said

the entire point of the altruism/selfishness argument is to defend the idea that self-interest and selfishness aren't inherently bad concepts, not to defend the idea that altruism is evil; it should be okay and in fact encouraged to selfishly do things that help other people because um you are helping other people

The "altruism is selfish" line is actually sort of a well-meaning commonplace in the U.S., isn't it? Or rather, it's basically a commonplace to say that a rewarding emotional life involves helping others, or that the solution to your own soul problems is going to involve doing something for someone else. (I don't know if that actually benefits altruism or not, though, since it can also sort of compartmentalize it to a point where you're vigorously self-interested in your personal dealings and then go volunteer at a shelter twice a week.)

Isn't the biological argument that societies/packs/gaggles, etc...w/o 'unselfishness' are more prone to disaster than those that have a modicum thereof?

so i guess having successfully unpacked the use of the n-word by artists were going to handle the paradox of altruism now?

yeah we're basically the new university of frankfurt

well when people say they volunteer and stuff because "it makes them feel good" there ya go right there. i used to think the genealogy of morals by FN was the bomb when i was younger. i should re-read it.

my brother in law has a big problem with the golden rule. um, for what that's worth. i remember having an argument about it with him.

I did it all for the nookie

the entire point of the altruism/selfishness argument is to defend the idea that self-interest and selfishness aren't inherently bad concepts, not to defend the idea that altruism is evil; it should be okay and in fact encouraged to selfishly do things that help other people because um you are helping other people

― emo WINNER! (HI DERE), Wednesday, July 7, 2010 1:29 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmarkthat's true, but i've also heard it used to establish moral equivalence between ostensibly selfless and obviously selfish acts. like, "there is nothing uniquely wrong with egregious selfishness, because everyone is basically selfish, even people who seem or claim to be acting altruistically. it's all the same, and no one can claim the moral high ground, because everybody's just doing what they want." and while logically sound, i think that argument is BS on a moral level. it's simple nihilism, and it's often presented with a smug smirk - not that i'm accusing you of smugness.

it's interesting the way that capitalism has incorporated altruism as a sales pitch

:/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyK3RoDYZPg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-z-mQyvkO4

"This is about ARTISTIC use, so keep shit like Skrewdr1ver and Dav1d Allen C0e"

Why is it that racism can't be artistic? Like "hate" is some inert dark matter that can't have anything to do with real art. Is "Black Korea" somehow "more artistic" than 5kr3\/\/dr1\/er, and if so why? (Bonus pts for not falling back on the "racism is prejudice plus power")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4a3V0f72-s

I mean it makes no sense to act like that Guns n Roses N-word is somehow "more artistic" than Coe doing it when it's obviously just plain ol racism that Axl later explained away as babby Axle being "too real." The oi and outlaw country guys don't think they're being legitimately racist either, half the time. If we're gonna talk about "artistically" using a word, we may as well define what we mean.

no one here claimed that axl rose's use of the word served any legitimate artistic purpose. with others, like patti smith and cocorosie, the consensus was that their use of the word was ill advised in the end, even if their intention wasn't to express racism.

expressing racism is not a valuable artistic enterprise.

http://sd.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/i/keep-calm-and-love-fp-21.png

Is anyone here defending "Black Korea"?

Showing off your working knowledge of actual racist music is just wink-wink bullshit and the thread doesn't need it.

Winky G. Winkgarten

thought for sure that this revive was going to be about Honey G

punkishippies is always on about this shit

We should probably get into how Douglas Pearce is misunderstood while we are at it

Can't be bothered to read thread. What did we decide about The Classical in the end?

I guess I'll give punkishippies that the distinction between 'artistic' use of a racial slur and 'actually racist' use is vague and worth questioning. I agree that GnR were being actually racist in "One in a Million".

xp i always thought the use of the word, in "the classical," modified as it is with the word "obligatory," wass supposed to point out how societies have this tendency to marginalize certain groups -- sort of a foucauldian thing. the target is not the out group, but society, for creating out groups.

however, i am reading now that he is targeting the bbc's tendency toward tokenism, putting a few black people in the crowds of televised performances. this is a less defensible use of the word in my view. the target is still the "bbc" but the black people in the crowd are also being singled out in a very disrespectful kind of way.

inconclusive.

30 albums and he never did it other than 20 seconds into his would-be breakout record. total provocateur move, still makes me a bit uncomfortable though

I mean, it's meant to, yeah yeah

definitely mars a song with otherwise amazing lyrics

ts: 1981 vs. 2016

recent events reminded me of this classic exchange upthread:

Slayer: two Latinos and a Jew (Kerry King). Granted, the other guy is about as Aryan as you can get and is obsessed with Nazi imagery, but what are you gonna do.

― Chicago to Philadelphia: "Suck It" (Bill Magill), Wednesday, June 23, 2010 9:38 AM

not be obsessed with nazi imagery

― max, Wednesday, June 23, 2010 9:39 AM

lol