An interesting subject, I thought this somewhat controversial and an unnecessary card to play: "Yet high visibility for black men is matched by high vulnerability - as illustrated by disproportionate rates of arrest and incarceration for black men in the UK and USA."

If you go back to the jazz and big band age, it was about commanding respect for the race. That's why Duke Ellington was the sharpest cat in town. So it goes with the territory, a second class citizen, as an effective weapon will outclass those who beat down and subjugate and/or embarrass his people will by being many times more urbane and stylishly hip than they are will eventually by force of sartorial edge come to respect you. The same with the working class British mods and even too the officer class of the first New Edwardians after WWII who rebelled against having to live off the dole money from the USA.

I am also intrigued how this gets corrupted and abused too: the modern day minstrel show of the stylised gangsta rapper - the black man as the ultimate tribal primitive and heightened vision of sexual masculinity with his modern day version of "jungle music" and dancing ladies in the ghetto. There is also a conscious move against this in the musical world of course, Wynton Marsalis springs to mind.

Im not sure much gets determined from the term.

Last edited by Bop (2016-09-24 13:21:21)

Again...a bit of a broad term.. I think its bollocks really, the 'black' identity..normally used by black people or white people looking to exploit, undermine or promote what it is to be 'black', which we all know is complete BS..like if someone tried to determine you on what other people in your race liked or disliked, it's all a bit silly. For instance MJQ doesnt really suggest to me ideology found in grime music.

I had a white South African colleague who noted, as others have, that the Hepcat always has impeccable and first rate shoes on, always polished to perfection either in black or rich aged antique patinas of distinction. Anyway, there we were one evening drinking away and he told me he use to work in an upmarket shoe store during his summer holidays in Cape Town. This was during apartheid, but they did manage to source C&J's and he said the best customers were black clientele. He told me that there was much status in the black middle class community to have serious English bench made shoes.

Yeah, great stuff. Forget French cuisine, or the many variants of local German cuisine, or what Italy can do. Black food all the way!