Race Matters

So PTB drops knowledge on the White Sox demographic controversy, which is a controversy only in the sense that “what you see is what you get” is a syllogism. There is something strange in seeing the cameras pan across a see of white White Sox fans, but there is also something familiar. My memories of going to U.S. Sell-u-late Field are of a vague egalitarianism between people in the outfield, such that shiny-faced college kids and white collar whites and blacks sort of agreed to leave each other alone. Now, I suspect that it depended on where one sat and how much you had to drink, which itself depends on how much money you can blow on a baseball game. Seeing sameness on the television screen has to be about money as much as anything, eh? But this is a boring argument, and this is not, as the say, the new cleavage.

Am I wrong, or does Gabriel Garcia Marquez have a new novel coming out entitled: Memories of My Melancholy Whores?

My race matters – I have a lot of kids in class who identify with Jay Z and the notion of hustling. They are poor, and many come from broken homes. It’s interesting (God it seems like anyone who uses interesting as an adjective anymore should be shot, but “perplexing” is ruled out and I wont waste more of your time on this subject) to notice the little things they’ve appropriated from urban black culture, seeing as this is, uh, rural rez culture. But it’s a strange amalgamated appropriation, from all kinds of different cultural moments making for like a pastiche of Indian thuggitude. Shit like complicated handshakes, being all Slim-with-tilted-brim, wearing the flannels with the top button buttoned but everything else hanging out, wearing old Biggie t-shirts, G-unit label sweatshirts, the baggy ass pants with white adidas, tattoos on the hands and neck: nothing that would be completely unexpected or out of place in a city, but definitely assembled from different eras and traditions. I guess their style (and it’s almost exclusively boys) is just an echo of what they see on MTV, and in making it their own, a certain kind of transformative effect comes out.

Anyway. Get in where you fit in.