April 15, 2012

The Demand for Black Rage

Last summer, I wrote about Bruce Norris's play about real estate and race in Chicago, Clybourne Park. (Here's an interview with Norris.) The NYT has an article about rehearsals for its opening on Broadway that unintentionally makes an important point about how Nice White People want middle class African-Americans to be driven to the edge of violence just by the thought of things that happened to blacks before they were born. 
Seven Actors Face a Big Challenge: He Just Said That? 
By PATRICK HEALY 
THE seven actors in the new Broadway play “Clybourne Park” were mostly strangers to one another when they met for the first table read of this stinging comedy by Bruce Norris in January 2010. They had no real comfort zone among them as they began to wade through the mudslide of racial indignities set off by white characters arguing about integration in 1959 Chicago. 
Midway through Act I, for instance, the character Jim — a white minister in the middle-class neighborhood of the title — becomes tongue-tied asking if “Negro” is more courteous than “colored.” Later a white homeowner named Karl Lindner questions Francine, a black maid, if she ever skis; after a stunned double-take, she says no. Lindner jabbers that “there is just something about the pastime of skiing that doesn’t appeal to the Negro community.” 
The scenes were so charged that the play’s director, Pam MacKinnon, decided she would never rehearse Act I for two days in a row without interspersing the second act, which is set in 2009 and includes new black characters who step up to the fight.
Even so, some actors asked for breaks to blow off steam. “If somebody hurts your feelings, you remember that feeling — it lives in you,” recalled Crystal A. Dickinson, who plays the maid, during an interview with the cast on the set of the play. “Now imagine that feeling 17 times in a row.” 
A likely contender this June for the Tony Award for best play, “Clybourne Park” has had an unusually long and rough road to Broadway, where it opens on Thursday. The cast members had to come to terms with the discomfiting contradictions in their characters; Mr. Norris won a Pulitzer Prize for the Off Broadway production of the play and waited to see if it would reach Broadway; and this new production nearly collapsed because of a falling-out between him and a former producer. The head-spinning events often seemed of a piece with the whiplash from the revelations and did-he-just-say-that? dialogue in the show itself. 
Typical of Mr. Norris’s style, the play takes place in two time periods. The Eisenhower-era Act I centers on whites preparing for the arrival of a black family on the block — and not just any black family, but the Youngers of Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark 1959 play “A Raisin in the Sun,” in which the move to Clybourne Park represents a dream fulfilled. Act II is set 50 years later, in the same house, as white yuppies seek to gentrify a neighborhood that has become a black enclave. (The same actors play different characters in each act.) 
... That the production survived is joy enough for the actors to regard the emotional rigors of the play, during rehearsal two years ago as well as now, as worth the trouble. As they stretched out on the sofas and armchairs of 406 Clybourne Street on the stage of the Walter Kerr Theater, the cast even struggled to recall some of the earlier touchy moments — not for a lack of memories but because the relief of reaching Broadway trumped them.

In other words, the actors couldn't really remember any of this until the NYT reporter worked hard to dredge up largely forgotten memories. Or perhaps the actors made up these memories to give the NYT what it wanted? These are professional Broadway actors, and it was still evidently hard for them to initially conjure up what the reporter wanted from them.
... Perhaps the most vicious lines in the play are delivered by Mr. Shamos, both as Karl (the only “Clybourne” character actually in “Raisin”) and as Lindsey’s husband, Steve. During the pre-Broadway tryout of this production in Los Angeles this winter Mr. Shamos would hear gasps and even hisses at some of Karl’s lines, especially during matinee performances attended by school groups. After the first preview performances on Broadway last month some theatergoers moaned when the actors paused after a particularly harsh line by Karl. The next day Ms. MacKinnon, the director, cut the pause because she didn’t want the audience to have a chance to turn against the character quite yet. 
Mr. Shamos said he was mostly able to shake off the audience reaction now but recalled feeling relieved during the early days at Playwrights when the actors would finish difficult scenes or go out to eat or get smoothies together. Rarely, though, would rehearsals or meals become consciousness-raising sessions where the actors talked at length about what the play brought up from their own lives.
“I think it’s good that we never tried to overexplain why we felt a line was offensive or overanalyze our reactions to the work,” he said. “We just wanted to be the purest communicators of the play.”

Basically, this racial anger among the black cast members didn't really happen, but NYT subscribers want to believe it did.

As Orwell, liked to say, who controls the past controls the future. My in-laws were nice white liberals who tried to make integration work, not fleeing the West Side of Chicago until their children had been mugged three times. By trying, they wound up losing half their net worth and my late father-in-law ended up with a 126 mile commute to his job in the orchestra at the Chicago Opera House. But that kind of history is unappreciated, to say the least. Nobody wants to hear about it, and especially nobody wants to hear any hard feelings about it.

This is particularly funny because the playwright himself identifies with the white people who were driven from their Chicago neighborhood:
ED: Why did the play coalesce around A Raisin in the Sun? 
BN: Well, as a child, when I saw Raisin my  point of identification with that play was the character of Karl Lindner. He’s the white man who comes to ask the Youngers not to move into Clybourne Park. That’s the character that appears in the first act of my play Clybourne Park.When I became attracted to that play, I always thought of myself as the antagonist, not as the hero. 
ED: You identified with Karl? 
BN: I identified with Karl and I identified with all of my culture, the people that I grew up around, as the people of Clybourne Park who did not want integration.

105 comments:

DYork said...

...makes an important point about how Nice White People want middle class African-Americans to be driven to the edge of violence just by the thought of things that happened to blacks before they were born.

Well Samuel L. Jackson's career is going strong playing the same Pissed off at Whitey Black Guy in near every film.

This issue reminds me of one of the first times I noticed the Sympathetic White Person's love of Black Rage.

It was a CNN interview with Robert Johnson of BET TV by a White female reporter. He was recounting his struggles and whenever he got to some problem the White woman would ask "Didn't you feel lots of rage?" She did this repeatedly and each time he brushed it off and got back to how he went about expanding the business.

Another time was an ESPN interview with Mike Tyson by Roy Firestone. Firestone kept getting around to Tyson's "rage" and how he needed to express it in the ring.

There is a certain type of White person who gets titillated by stories of the black male's "rage" at White folks. To them it is erotic. Their submissive nature seems to crave it.

slumber_j said...

Interesting character-name choice in Karl Lindner. *Carl* Lindner was a Cincinnati billionaire and big supporter of the Republican Party until his death last year.

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

Jackson has had some odd/different roles (The Red Violin, The Caveman's Valentine). Those tend to be not the roles people want to watch him casted in.

Anonymous said...

Now I'm thinking of analogies, like the broader Demand for Housewife Umbrage--pandering to that one always seems to come up a winner. Witness the pseudo-controversy over Hilary Rosen's diss of Ann Romney; even though the missus probably quite rarely felt a level of pressure equivalent to being a less affluent woman juggling at-will employment among her daily responsibilities, it was a snap that a bipartisan committee would rise as one to denounce this perceived Slight to Mothers Everywhere.

If anything Rosen just further confirmed that lesbians don't possess the same innate talent at playing that angle.

Anonymous said...

The cure for racial strife? Smoothie breaks!!

Anonymous said...

http://youtu.be/feKtRqGzlsg

newsic

Anonymous said...

OT but I am really getting tired of Brimelow closing VDARE. why not have a drive FIRST THEN close it if it doesn't do enough...

Camlost said...

It was a CNN interview with Robert Johnson of BET TV by a White female reporter. He was recounting his struggles and whenever he got to some problem the White woman would ask "Didn't you feel lots of rage?" She did this repeatedly and each time he brushed it off and got back to how he went about expanding the business.

The same thing happened years ago as I watched Larry King interview LeBron James on the eve of his free agency move away from Cleveland. Out of nowhere, Larry King kept trying to inject the topics of "racism" and "prejudice" over and over, but LeBron kept dismissing such talk immediately. It was nauseating to hear that liberal wind bag keep harping on the "racism" issue to a guy who subsequently signed a $110M contract.

summary here:

http://www.waitingfornextyear.com/2010/06/lebron-james-with-larry-king-on-free-agency-prejudice/

full interview here:

http://www.examiner.com/pop-culture-in-cleveland/lebron-james-full-larry-king-interview-videos-from-cnn-com-and-youtube

Drawbacks said...

Incidentally, A Raisin in the Sun is a really good title.

Anonymous said...

I saw Clybourne in Chicago. The 1959/2009 differences in gender roles impressed me as much as the racial roles. The aggressive female lawyer shoved her husband, without any gasp from the audience.

Conatus said...

I spent my twenty years in NortheastDC and I don't recall a lot of Black Rage going on. I think Black Rage is what Naive White People are schooled to expect in their liberal arts classes and their major media consumption. "It is the twenty third and a quarter anniversay of the Bimingham sit ins."
God forbid the Naive White People actually live in a neighborhood where people literally crap on your front step, back step and ...gasp...roof, all slightly out of direct sight places. I don't think it was done out of Rage, that is complimenting acts like these with too much thought, I think it was just expeditious.
Black Rage only comes into play when more educated Blacks perceive an amenable, Nevillian(the appeaser Neville Chamberlain) audience. If you are well dressed white person and strive mightily not to make eye contact you are a good candidate for becoming a Black Rage audience member.
And then the more you clap and approve publicly(making a Big show out of cringing appeasement),i.e. the more you grovel like a wiggly white worm, the higher you rise in white social status.

josh said...

Were I to be a Broadway actor and be given a choice of roles in this play,I would surely grasp at the role of Karl,and I'd enjoy the hissess and gasps from the sudience.(Projectiles,now thats another matter.) I ove your last line:Good decent nice fine clean well-read well-fed nice good white people...who just dont want integration.

Carol said...

Come to think of it, modern jazz went off a cliff in the 60s and the last sounds I heard were usually described by white critics as the expression of Black Rage..I'm thinking of the interminable a capella screeches and squawks of Coltrane.

Up until that point he tried to be musical, he worked hard at it, but I guess he did not completely fulfill the critics desires.

Anonymous said...

"There is a certain type of White person who gets titillated by stories of the black male's "rage" at White folks. To them it is erotic. Their submissive nature seems to crave it."

The most prominent example of this is the entire genre of black male-blonde/redhead female porn.

Kylie said...

"There is a certain type of White person who gets titillated by stories of the black male's "rage" at White folks. To them it is erotic. Their submissive nature seems to crave it."

And where the rage is absent, those whites will do their best to conjure it up so they can submit to it.

Another Nice White Lady Proves Whiskey Right

Joe Six-Pack said...

Liberals live in their imagination, I know it as a former Liberal.

riches said...

“white(s)...not fleeing the West Side of Chicago until their children had been mugged three times.”

Today, Chicago’s news media would report the muggings as: Sweltering Heat Forces Cops To Close West Side

Anonymous said...

Jews may wanna drum up black rage(and brown rage)to use against whites, but I think most white liberals don't so much wanna drum up black rage as show that THEY understand.

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure Roy Firestone is Jewish, in case that is relevant.

Anonymous said...

Someday this play will be used in high school drama classes to try to implant certain feelings in students.

You don't get things to settle by constantly stirring the pot.

Larry, San Francisco said...

That was an interesting interview with Bruce Norris. He seems to be a liberal struggling with the fact that the liberal world view isn't true. Perhaps he will pull a Mamet in the next few years.

helene edwards said...

The Negro community also has the healthy social custom of attaching no stigma to the illegitimate child ...

Gunnar Myrdal, "The Negro in America."

Anonymous said...

Steve,

You should review this new book from Washington Post-award winning reporter Colin Flaherty called “White Girl Bleed a Lot”: The Return of Race Riots to America and How the Media Ignore It which was published last month but hasn't been publicized much in the media.

Here's the site for the book and a blurb about it:

http://www.whitegirlbleedalot.com/

"Race riots are back.

Along with widespread racial crime and violence.

In hundreds of episodes in more than 50 cities since 2010, groups of black people are roaming the streets of America -- assaulting, intimidating, stalking, threatening, vandalizing, stealing, shooting, stabbing, even raping and killing.

They go by different names: Flash mobs, flash robs, or as one social worker put it: Kids just "blowing off steam."

But local media and public officials are silent. Crime is color blind, says a Milwaukee police chief. Race is not important, a Chicago newspaper editor says.

That denies the obvious: America is the most race conscious society in the world.

Order Here.

We learn that every day from black caucuses, black teachers, black unions, black ministers, black colleges, black high schools, black music, black moguls, black hair business owners, black public employees, black art, black names, black poets, black inventors, black soldiers.

Everything except black violent crime. That is Taboo.

Result: Few know about it. Fewer still are talking about it.

The list of cities under attack is long and getting longer -- with some cities suffering dozens of attacks in the last year alone:

Almost as astonishing is the willingness of people in authority and in the media to deny it. Ignore it. Explain it away. Even condone and lie about it.

In Chicago, after weeks of racial violence where the newspapers refused to mention the crime was almost exclusively black gangs on individual whites, the Superintendent of the Police said he knew what was causing the violence: Sarah Palin.

A member of Congress from Chicago, Bobby Rush, said black violence in Chicago was routine and the only reason anyone was paying attention to the race riots in downtown Chicago was because it was it was black on white violence. This is a theme heard in Rochester, Washington, D.C., and dozens of other places: ‘What’s the big deal? This has been happening a long time in black neighborhoods.’

Congressman Rush is probably right. Which means this problem is hundreds of times worse than we think."

Paul Mendez said...

Mr. Shamos would hear gasps and even hisses at some of Karl’s lines, especially during matinee performances attended by school groups.

In Colonial Williamsburg, the school groups sometimes attack the white re-enactors who are "capturing" a runaway slave, and try to help the black re-enactor "escape." They do this frequently enough that the re-enactors now have an alternative script they go out of character to deliver.

no_limit_negro said...

"there is just something about the pastime of skiing that doesn’t appeal to the Negro community."


snow be racist, man.

Anonymous said...

Firestone is black, isn't he?

Jeeves said...

@Carol
Come to think of it, modern jazz went off a cliff in the 60s and the last sounds I heard were usually described by white critics as the expression of Black Rage..I'm thinking of the interminable a capella screeches and squawks of Coltrane.

Black Rage doesn't discriminate. Just listen to Take 1 of Bags' Groove, where it's black on black rage, with Monk getting after it because he was asked to lay out during Davis's solos.

I've gone back to listening to stuff like Buddy Rich and Chet Baker. Some Brubeck. Getting back to my roots.

Norris is a Scientologist, huh? Do you have to feel guilty to be a member, or just want to feel guilty.

Marc B said...

"Firestone kept getting around to Tyson's "rage" and how he needed to express it in the ring."

Roy Firestone was white? I always thought he was light-skinned.

Whiskey said...

Those "people" DYork are known as women. Fifty Shades of Grey, Twilight, etc.

Henry Canaday said...

Without feeling too sorry for actors, let us note that serious actors must deal with so many financial challenges as well as emotional challenges, in the form of rejection by directors, humiliation by critics and confrontations with the less pleasant side of their own nature as well as the nature of their fellow human beings, before they can even begin an infrequently-paid career in stage, that the proposition that some young black actors in 2012 are going to be traumatized by hearing some dated racial discussion from the 1950s is absurd.

Anonymous said...

I am white. I know and work w/ a lot of non-media-oriented black people. they are good people who tell me that they can't stand "ghetto."

There ARE a lot more black thugs than white thugs, and these member s of the black middle class would admit it in a heartbeat, but they figure w/ all the Al Sharptons etc out there, it's best to just keep their feelings out of the media.

The sad part of this is that it truly encourages racism. when white people think all blacks are behind the gangs and criminals, they dismiss all black people as criminals. The black middle class has been totally cowed.

Lugash said...

I am Lugash.

Jackson has had some odd/different roles (The Red Violin, The Caveman's Valentine). Those tend to be not the roles people want to watch him casted in.

The Red Violin was an excellent movie. The is a brief scene of Jackson playing Pissed Off Black Guy.

I am Lugash.

Thucydides said...

The demand for black rage on the part of white liberals is to support their pious belief in human universalism/equality. For them, it is vitally important to think that black social pathology has a cause - a cause that can at least potentially be fixed, and is not due to something inherent, for example, low average IQ. For liberals, the evils of this world are always caused by something external to the individual such as bad institutions. It is the old Rousseauan belief in the essential goodness and rationality of man, or at least his amenability to educationist formation.

Anonymous said...

The WAPO archive does not show a single by-line article by mr. Flaherty 1987 to date. He once one a contest to write a chapter of an on-line spy novel on their site. That doesn't make him "an award-winning Washington Post reporter."

Anonymous said...

Roy Firestone was white? I always thought he was light-skinned.

Scotch-Irish IMO.

Anonymous said...

Uggh, Kylie, you got me good.

(Do not hit that link, people. It will not help your cosmic balance.)

Gilbert P

Darwin's Sh*tlist said...

@ Jeeves: Try some Art Pepper, particularly the record where he sat in with Miles Davis' rhythm section. He's playing a horn with a damaged mouthpiece. This is because his wife at the time didn't tell him about the session until the morning of, because she knew he'd get nervous, go on a smack binge, and miss it if he knew about it beforehand. So he wakes up, hears about the date and has to root around in the closet to try to cobble together a respectable horn. Turned out to be a classic.

el dorado said...

There was a PBS documentary on in the 90s. One of the people was a well educated guy from North Carolina who wanted to do a history on his town, or something like that. He was interviewing a black lady perhaps in her 40s, who sounded educated but was a not a "professional" or acadamic, that I can recall--which may be why she could be honest. She very pleasantly and with no particular rancor, gave an account of her family, the town, general relations between the races, etc. She sounded perfectly normal and lucid, not hiding any sort of rage, and the account she gave was of people who got on with their lives, didn't mix much but behaved well towards each other, and also there was much less actual segregation than is commonly supposed. The white guy cracked me up though--a few times he tried to get the woman to say how angry or hurt or oppressed--can't recall the exact vocabulary, but words to that effect--she and other blacks must have been. She actually looked a little askance at him, and assured him she was telling things as they were and not leaving out any grisly details. He really seemed to want to hear some. Perhaps he just wanted everything out in the open and really didn't know. Now I think his family had been slave owners back in the day, but even in the 1990s, that would not have involved any living persons.

Bill said...

Dutch Boy said...

The real targets of Northern desegregation were the white ethnics who had formed their own neighborhoods in the big cities. A coalition of anti-Catholic white liberals, big business and black demagogues managed to force most of them out of town into the suburbs where they could be "Americanized" (and not coincidentally de-unionized and replaced with cheap black labor). The result: Detroit et al.


Being "Americanized" was a step up for most ethnic urban whites (and some Asians) through the 1980s. Most of the young whites in ethnic neighborhoods were happy to leave whether blacks were pounding on the gates or not.

Being from Seattle, I have a different perspective on this. We have very few blacks, so they were never much of a threat as in Chicago, Detroit, etc. Even so, young Irish fled Capitol Hill, young Italians left the Rainier Valley and young Norwegians poured out of Ballard. Even the Japanese left their neighborhoods to settle all over. Today, you can see the Jesuit schools and Irish churches on Capitol Hill, the Italian bakeries and meat markets in the Rainer Valley, the Scandinavian Lutheran churches and boatwrights in Ballard, and the Japanese gardens and trimmed bushes on Beacon Hill, but they are just relics, and the holdouts in the neighborhoods are very old.

Can we really say honestly that these people who left their neighborhoods did so against their desires? I don't think so. I think that's one of the better things about our country, too -- the desire to be a part of the greater American society. It's really the return to a sort of caste-oriented attitude and ethnic fractionalism that's the big problem, and so-called "progressive" whites are as much culprits as anyone, perhaps because they have no sense of belonging, which is a sad, sorry place to be.

Anonymous said...

The demand for black rage on the part of white liberals is to support their pious belief in human universalism/equality. For them, it is vitally important to think that black social pathology has a cause - a cause that can at least potentially be fixed, and is not due to something inherent, for example, low average IQ.

All of the things you refer are due to Christianity. Christians insisted that man was something special (created in God's image), had free will and so on. Political correctness is the bitter harvest.

Anonymous said...

"There is a certain type of White person who gets titillated by stories of the black male's "rage" at White folks. To them it is erotic. Their submissive nature seems to crave it."

I remember ages ago, Ted Koppel sitting in a semi circle with a bunch of black inmates. He looked like he wanted to be passed around the room. He hung on their every word.

For a long time the media treated black inmates like every one was Nelson Mandela, and every white inmate was portrayed as a brain damaged racist. They've given up, to a degree, on the Mandela thing but the white thing remains.

Kylie said...

"Uggh, Kylie, you got me good."

Sorry, Gilbert. Only after I'd submitted the comment did I think of including a warning.

"(Do not hit that link, people. It will not help your cosmic balance.)

Gilbert P"


No, but it might help some here see in a very real, very literal way just what we are up against.

Anonymous said...

I think black rampage has supplanted black rage.

Anonymous said...

I think black resentment(for success of others), black contempt(for weaker races), and black aggression(for whatever reason) are more relevant than black rage.

Often when blacks attack whites, they seem to do it less out of rage than fun. They be laughing, hollering, celebrating, and partying and shit.
Black rage has roots in 60s ideology of righteous anger.
So, 50s gave us noble negro, 60s gave us black rage, and liberals cannot think about blacks except in terms of spiritual nobility(MLK's supposed message of peace and forgiveness) and righteous rage(Malcolm X's eloquent case for black pride).
But black reality has moved beyond that. Most blacks today are neither into nobleness or rage. They're just into messing with folks for da fun of it. It all be about black rampage and partying about it too.

Anonymous said...

White liberals find black rage appealing in a chic way cuz it's always diverted from themselves at white conservatives.

White liberals think, WE UNDERSTAND WHY YOU BLACKS ARE SOOOO ANGRY, AND WE ARE GUILTY TOO, BUT WE SYMPATHIZE AND APOLOGIZE AND ARE ON YOUR SIDE, AND SO WE SHOULD JOIN TOGETHER AND DIRECT YOUR RIGHTEOUS BLACK RAGE AT THOSE EVIL WHITE CONSERVATIVES WHO FEEL NO GUILT ABOUT WHAT THE EVIL WHITE RACE HAS DONE.

Notice that the favorite target of black rage is not really themselves but whites in South Africa or whites in the South.

Svigor said...

"There is a certain type of White person who gets titillated by stories of the black male's "rage" at White folks. To them it is erotic. Their submissive nature seems to crave it."

The most prominent example of this is the entire genre of black male-blonde/redhead female porn.


'Cuz Blacks certainly don't buy porn. And they certainly wouldn't want to see Black men and White women in porn, if they did.

Svigor said...

In Colonial Williamsburg, the school groups sometimes attack the white re-enactors who are "capturing" a runaway slave, and try to help the black re-enactor "escape." They do this frequently enough that the re-enactors now have an alternative script they go out of character to deliver.

Reminds me of that study that suggested that Blacks were more empathetic; maybe it just means they have more trouble separating reality and entertainment?

Truth said...

"The most prominent example of this is the entire genre of black male-blonde/redhead female porn."

Hey, Bro:

Why don't you share with us the names, dates, directors, stars, production companies, filming locations, and good-scene, time counters of these films that you were so offended by.

M Steinberg said...

Howard Stern ("Private Parts") and Dr Aric Sigman ("New Improved") both have some rather un-pc memories of school integration.

Anonymous said...

Darwin's Sh*tlist said...
@ Jeeves: Try some Art Pepper, particularly the record where he sat in with Miles Davis' rhythm section. He's playing a horn with a damaged mouthpiece. This is because his wife at the time didn't tell him about the session until the morning of, because she knew he'd get nervous, go on a smack binge, and miss it if he knew about it beforehand. So he wakes up, hears about the date and has to root around in the closet to try to cobble together a respectable horn. Turned out to be a classic."

Wow. I guess you never know who will turn up on Steve’s HBD site. I am a huge Art Pepper fan and have almost all his albums. You should also check out Art Pepper plus 11 arranged by Marty Paich plus the other two albums that Paich did with Art Pepper on alto (and the one he did Herb Gellar on alto is also great too).

I also highly recommend Art Pepper's autobiography. As a White jazz musician he served two terms in San Quentin in the late 1950s and early 1960s for heroin possession much like Chet Baker his friend (both were White and had matinee idol looks too). He also grew up in a Black neighborhood in Southern California and his first gig in L.A. was at fifteen with the all Black jazz group led by Lee Young (the younger brother of the legendary Black tenor saxophonist Lester Young). It was during the early 1940s and he played lead alto. The photos in the book with him standing out in this all Back group are time capsules that are quite interesting.

Interestingly, in his autobiography he says the first time he encountered negative attitudes by black musicians toward white musicians (i.e. reverse racism) was in the late sixties and early seventies. I find that very interesting and pertinent to this posting discussion, because it suggests that to some extent the rage was manufactured in the 1960s … Blacks were taught and encouraged to feel rage against Whites.

Virtually all my favorite jazz players are highly melodic players from 1950s and 1960s and all seem all have some Southern California connection. Art Pepper (White), Chet Baker (White), Dexter Gordon (Black), Blue Mitchell (Black), Shorty Rogers (Jewish?), Shelly Manne (Jewish?). Manne was studio player and legendary Jazz drummer who have many …many great small group recording from the 1950s and 1960s. Check out his early quintet recordings “Live at the Black Hawk” (in 4 volumes) for the epitome of Southern California laid back cool 1950 and 1960s cool jazz.

There is apparently something about the Southern California weather that makes jazz musicians orient toward playing melodically (when it is seventy degrees and sunny every day I guess it is hard to feel enraged). Maybe Steve can opine about this.

As a final note, I mentioned that Shelly Manne was one of my favorites and you mentioned Buddy Rich. Both I believe are Jewish as are several other legendary jazz drummers including Stan Levy and Mel Lewis. All of them were amazing players who kept incredible time (and who also had a great eye for spotting and attracting talented side people be they Black or White). Something about counting and keeping track of time must be in their blood. Glad in this instance they expressed it as being amazing jazz drummers … instead of investment bankers or tax consultants. LOL…

I myself am a White lawyer (top five law school graduate) who has played jazz semi- professionally and sat in with some of greats.

I know quite a few Black, White, and Asian (primarily Japanese) jazz musicians and from what I understand there still exists an undercurrent of racial tension though I myself never encountered it (but then again because I only play casually maybe the Black performers I have sat in with don’t view me as a potential competitor seeking to economically displace them from their livelihood).

Cheers... Keep listening to the music and reading Steve.

Anonymous said...

'Cuz Blacks certainly don't buy porn. And they certainly wouldn't want to see Black men and White women in porn, if they did.


It's a mainstream genre driven by purchases made by white guys.

Truth said...

"And where the rage is absent, those whites will do their best to conjure it up so they can submit to it."

Oh come on, Kylie, stop fighting the urge to grovel, you know every cell in your oppressor body shouts out with the desire to beg forgiveness.

ben tillman said...

Roy Firestone was white? I always thought he was light-skinned.

He's Jewish.

http://www.americanprofile.com/articles/roy-firestone-espn/

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

"There is a brief scene of Jackson playing Pissed Off Black Guy" -Lugash

OK, but you would have to admit that a movie featuring a black guy really worked up about room service while he obsesses on yer garden-variety Stradivarius, specifically, is pretty rare.

And he didn't even have to put up with that PRC tiger mom in the other part

ben tillman said...

@ Jeeves: Try some Art Pepper, particularly the record where he sat in with Miles Davis' rhythm section. He's playing a horn with a damaged mouthpiece. This is because his wife at the time didn't tell him about the session until the morning of, because she knew he'd get nervous, go on a smack binge, and miss it if he knew about it beforehand. So he wakes up, hears about the date and has to root around in the closet to try to cobble together a respectable horn. Turned out to be a classic.

For some reason this makes me think of Dock Ellis.

Anonymous said...

It's a mainstream genre driven by purchases made by white guys.

Or by producers with an agenda.

Udolpho.com said...

For black rage read black childishness. They don't rage like someone who has a real grievance, but like a child that is throwing a tantrum.

Anonymous said...

Mike Wallace's "black rage." (Interview with Morgan Freeman re Black History Month.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeixtYS-P3s

Stanley Ann Dunham said...

There is a certain type of White person who gets titillated by stories of the black male's "rage" at White folks. To them it is erotic. Their submissive nature seems to crave it.

Hello!

Anonymous said...

The most prominent example of this is the entire genre of black male-blonde/redhead female porn.

I was really disappointed when I discovered that Bobbi Starr had stooped to doing that crap.

She had been a music major in college (she played the oboe - not sure what that means), and then, after graduation, she got involved with the gang which purchased the Armory in San Francisco, and I had always thought that, if nothing else, a girl like her would have been a whale of a fun date back when you were an undergraduate.

Contemplationist said...

More fuel for "diversity" in the workplace.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/172604/nyc-pressures-omnicom-for-workplace-diversity.html

If this is not like a routine Communist inquisition I dont know what is. By what law are these things pursued?

travis said...

All of the things you refer are due to Christianity. Christians insisted that man was something special (created in God's image), had free will and so on. Political correctness is the bitter harvest.

You're a little confused there. The idea that man is something special and has free will is a product of Renaissance humanism. The reaction to that idea is the Reformation's emphasis on Original Sin and predestination.

This is everything you need to properly understand the American story, really. Puritan universalism is the insidious, robust virus that always coursed through this country's intellectual and spiritual lifeblood -- so robust that it has managed to be even more successful without the whole fear-of-God thing in its mix.

If Puritans were Calvinists, and Calvin believed in predestinaton and the election of a chosen few, then how could Puritans be considered universalists? You are confusing them with their offspring -- Yankee Unitarian Universalists. They are the "robust virus" that your speak of (I like that term). Here's the inconvenient truth: those New England transcendentalists were more influenced by German Romanticism than they were by the Jew Christ (Jesus got bumped out in Unitarianism).

Anonymous said...

Mike Wallace was demanding (or at least trying to incite) black rage in that interview with Morgan Freeman.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous Anonymous said...

For a long time the media treated black inmates like every one was Nelson Mandela, and every white inmate was portrayed as a brain damaged racist. They've given up, to a degree, on the Mandela thing but the white thing remains."

Yes, I remember Koppel interviewing a couple of gang-bangers during the LA riots, seeking their wisdom. The media does seem to have dispensed with the meme of hardened black criminals being sages, although they still seem to think that large black women are necessarily repositories of wisdom.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

""'Cuz Blacks certainly don't buy porn. And they certainly wouldn't want to see Black men and White women in porn, if they did.""

It's a mainstream genre driven by purchases made by white guys."

Yeah, right. Matzoh is available in supermarkets in Tennessee - you think it's baptists who are buying it though? Malt liquor and menthols are available nearly everywhere, but what groups are more likely to buy it? Here's a hint - what's the color of the people in the advertisements for it?

Don't you imagine it's remotely possible that black men are disproportionate consumers of porn, just as they are disproportionate consumers of purple-drank, fried chicken, or judicial custody?

Kylie said...

"Oh come on, Kylie, stop fighting the urge to grovel, you know every cell in your oppressor body shouts out with the desire to beg forgiveness."

You're working up to a suggestion we reenact scenes from Mandingo, aren't you?

Anonymous said...

Knew a black actress who appeared in a local theatre production. The Scots-Irish free weekly reviewed it. Their sole comment on her excellent portrayal of a happy character was: "[Actress name] was not angry enough."

I saw her afterward and commented on this review. "Scots-Irish," I said (but did not say Scots-Irish), "like their Negroes angry." She laughed so hard, I thought she was going to explode.

Anonymous said...

The only thing that keeps Detroit from descending to the level of Mogadishu or Port-au-Prince is the mass infusion of white tax dollars and support. This is part of The White Tax. If we gave them 15% of the country, infrastructure intact, they would be reduced to third-world poverty within a decade. If blacks had left Detroit instead of whites it would be one of the greatest cities on earth. Blacks aren't oppressed in this society, they live far above their abilities by sponging off the accomplishments of whites, and it's far past time for whites to point that fact out. The myth of black oppression is deliberately used by the left to foment racist rape, murder, and assault against innocent whites in the street, and attacking that myth is the most potent way of combating the program.

Anonymous said...

So the producers are subsidizing the unprofitable genre of black man on white woman porn?

Anonymous said...

So the producers are subsidizing the unprofitable genre of black man on white woman porn?

All porn, no matter how shoddy or freakish or niche, will turn a profit, because it's just so cheap to produce and distribute. Producers are therefore free to focus on whatever kind strikes their fancy. Now wonder why that would strike a producer's fancy.

Londoner said...

In the US context at least, black rage and violence is the single most potent lever of the anarcho-tyranny - it's not a fire the, um, elites want to burn out any time soon. They know they're insulated from it but don't want to take the heat off the proles.

Although in reality is it beginning to burn out? Blacks are still committing prodigiously evil individual crimes against whites, but the mass rioting of the 1960s-1990s doesn't seem to be the force it once was. Someone mentioned the other day that some of the low-level "community organisers" that would co-ordinate riot violence have been drawn up into the lower middle class. Plus obesity, laziness and electronic entertainment will all presumably soften up potential rioters and they seem to be growing fast in the black community. And apathy. Rioting can be hard work.

Svigor said...

I can only assume this one fell through the cracks the first time:

Segregation: gov't trampling Freedom in the name of White interests. People who want to integrate get screwed because the gov't loves power.

Integration: gov't trampling Freedom in the name of Black interests. People who don't want to integrate get screwed because the gov't loves power.

See a pattern yet? See the consistent bad guy?

Svigor said...

"Didn't you feel lots of rage?" She did this repeatedly and each time he brushed it off and got back to how he went about expanding the business.

"Will you please act like a savage for me? Just a taste of Black savagery for the home audience?"

Another time was an ESPN interview with Mike Tyson by Roy Firestone. Firestone kept getting around to Tyson's "rage" and how he needed to express it in the ring.

"Mike Tyson, Black savage!"

There is a certain type of White person who gets titillated by stories of the black male's "rage" at White folks. To them it is erotic. Their submissive nature seems to crave it.

Or they're just closet racists drumming up Black savagery.

Svigor said...

The demand for black rage on the part of white liberals is to support their pious belief in human universalism/equality. For them, it is vitally important to think that black social pathology has a cause - a cause that can at least potentially be fixed, and is not due to something inherent, for example, low average IQ. For liberals, the evils of this world are always caused by something external to the individual such as bad institutions. It is the old Rousseauan belief in the essential goodness and rationality of man, or at least his amenability to educationist formation.

Right. That's why libtards suborn savagery from intelligent Blacks. If they can get intelligent Blacks to act like savages, they can peel Black savagery away from low Black IQ, and thus excuse it.

Anonymous said...

You want black rage? You've got it:
"Police handcuff Ga. kindergartner for tantrum"

http://news.yahoo.com/police-handcuff-ga-kindergartner-tantrum-112459850.html

"Salecia Johnson, 6, was accused of tearing items off the walls and throwing furniture in an outburst ... Police said the girl knocked over a shelf that injured the principal."

Anonymous said...

She laughed so hard, I thought she was going to explode.

Is she single?

She sounds like she might be a fun date.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, that kindergarten story was scary.

I figured that that little girl must have gone completely ape-sh*t -OOPS!- make that "bat-sh*t" crazy if the cops actually had to arrest her.

Sheesh.

PS: HOMESCHOOL YOUR CHILDREN!!!

Anonymous said...

PS: HOMESCHOOL YOUR CHILDREN!!!

Wait, don't you know that homeschooling your kids will turn them into wheezing autistic nerds who will fail at life? It must be true: They said so on South Park!

Anonymous said...

This has been going on for a long time. In the 60s guys like Mike Wallace would practically orgasm every-time Malcolm X threatened the "Fire Next Time".

I think the Black Panthers and Malcolm X had more liberal white followers than black ones

Harry Baldwin said...

Speaking of stoking black rage, the Mark Twain House in Hartford, CT, has opened a new exhibit, 'Race, Rage & Redemption,' in which it will screen "Birth of a Nation" as well as "Hateful Things," a survey of racist imagery from the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University.

The website says "Please note: these exhibitions contain inflammatory and upsetting imagery. Parental discretion is advised."

Don King said...

Introducing da sistas in Rumble In The Jungle II.

Anonymous said...

Profitable? Not really. Maybe you mean will at least find a few buyers. Saying the black/white porn is the invention of a conspiracy of producers is a real doofus theory.

I think what we see at the video store reflects a certain comfort people have in seeing the order play out. What they internalize from watching D1 football flows into other tastes.

Truth said...

"You're working up to a suggestion we reenact scenes from Mandingo, aren't you?"

For once, Kylie, I'm speechless.

Truth said...

"All porn, no matter how shoddy or freakish or niche, will turn a profit, because it's just so cheap to produce and distribute."

Nothing turns a profit if no one buys it.

"Right. That's why libtards suborn savagery from intelligent Blacks. If they can get intelligent Blacks to act like savages, they can peel Black savagery away from low Black IQ, and thus excuse it."

LMAFO: You're reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaching again with this one, Sporti-Boy;

It's about the 6th time this week; did the Volvo dealership overcharge you, or what

Anonymous said...

Profitable? Not really. Maybe you mean will at least find a few buyers.

And yet porn producers continue to put out all manner of weird crap that could only appeal to a very small segment of the populace. Why bother doing that when you could make more money doing more of the usual mainstream stuff? Maybe for the same reason Hollywood keeps putting out all those dreary message movies that are practically guaranteed to lose money (except that porn, being so cheap to make & distribute, will always make a buck, even if it's so bizarre that it appeals to only a few thousand weirdos).


Nothing turns a profit if no one buys it.

Hell, you can find a buyer for practically anything in porn. And when the barriers to entry are so low (a video cam, a website, and a few sad freaks), you'll get it. Point is, producers produce what they themselves are into and wish to normalize. How do you think the trend for shaved pubes got started? Back in the '60s and '70s people would've found the idea creepy. But some producers were into pseudo-pedo porn and started pushing the idea. In that particular case, they actually succeeded in making it mainstream. Hope springs eternal.

Anonymous said...

How do you think the trend for shaved pubes got started? Back in the '60s and '70s people would've found the idea creepy. But some producers were into pseudo-pedo porn and started pushing the idea. In that particular case, they actually succeeded in making it mainstream. Hope springs eternal.

I blame the middle east situation for that. Middle eastern women have always depiliated. Well, they are pretty hairy. They are likely to have more arm and leg hair than most northern European men. Anyway, with all the middle eastern men over hear, girls got to know what they liked. And quite frankly, you have several hundred years of western art where the nudes of both sexes are always body-hair free. I spent my childhood looking at those nudes as part of my artistic education, and actually grew up thinking that women were supposed to shave. I wondered about the men though.

JSM said...

"For once, Kylie, I'm speechless."

Oh, please.

You suggested that very thing to me in those exact words several years ago, and I told you, "FOAD, you puke. Not gonna happen."

Kylie said...

"'You're working up to a suggestion we reenact scenes from Mandingo, aren't you?'

For once, Kylie, I'm speechless."


Should I take that as a no?

Anonymous said...

Off-Topic: I am wondering why Bruce Norris's use of the character Karl Lindner from the play A Raisin in the Sun is not an infringement of copyright?

Does Norris have a license of some kind, or permission from Hansberry's estate?

Anonymous said...

The theory that demand pushes supply is the oldest canard in economics. Supply creates demand far more often than the reverse.

The porn audience will and do take almost anything that's given to it.

Anonymous said...

There are a lot of weird porn websites with a small following. I wouldn't call the money earned from those sites real business level money.

The porn stocked at video stores are the type that are made by actual profit seeking businesses. From a survey of the stuff there, the whole black white thing looks like mainstream porn.

Truth said...

"Should I take that as a no?"

Now I've turned red.

"You suggested that very thing to me in those exact words several years ago, and I told you, "FOAD, you puke. Not gonna happen."

You're a broad?

Anonymous said...

"The porn stocked at video stores are the type that are made by actual profit seeking businesses. From a survey of the stuff there, the whole black white thing looks like mainstream porn."

LOL Spend a lot of time there, do you?

Anonymous said...

I spent my childhood looking at those nudes as part of my artistic education, and actually grew up thinking that women were supposed to shave.

Your name wouldn't happen to be John Ruskin, would it?

Svigor said...

LOL Spend a lot of time there, do you?

I still remember visiting one of the more popular (at the time, anyway) online porn DVD rental sites, and their "top whatever" number of titles. At the very top was a Black on Black title, followed by a mix of Black on Black and Black on White porn.

So, not only do Blacks not watch Black on White porn - they don't watch Black on Black porn, either!

I mean, if there's anything that's immediately obvious in this life, it's that Black guys aren't horny, aren't conspicuous consumers, and would never rent porn.

Svigor said...

Point is, producers produce what they themselves are into and wish to normalize.

That's wrong, Wrong, WRONG! Entertainment biz is all about money! The idea that entertainers would want to shape the biz, to the point that they can make money producing the kind of content that they're comfortable producing, is wrong, Wrong, WRONG!

Just ask Mel Gibson.

Svigor said...

LMAFO: You're reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaching again with this one, Sporti-Boy

Nice critique ('cept for calling me "boy"; Blacks should have better sense).

But you haven't heard my devastating counter:

Nooooooooooooot a reach, Troofy-boy.

Kylie said...

"'Should I take that as a no?'

Now I've turned red."


Let's see. You're now speechless and red. Well, it's a start....



Just kidding! Relax already. My idea of fun is more post-apocalyptic than antebellum.

Truth said...

Meanwhile, back in Stanford, Fl...

http://www.clickorlando.com/news/Witnesses-say-racial-slur-could-have-sparked-shooting-at-Sanford-apartments/-/1637132/10933272/-/g3484a/-/index.html

Anonymous said...

Svigor said...

"I still remember visiting one of the more popular (at the time, anyway) online porn DVD rental sites, and their "top whatever" number of titles. At the very top was a Black on Black title, followed by a mix of Black on Black and Black on White porn."



All of which you immediately rented.

Truth said...

"Just kidding! Relax already. My idea of fun is more post-apocalyptic than antebellum."

Yeah that was funny, you surprised me a little bit. You have no idea what's it like being a good looking black man in a mostly non-black town. You hear a few shocking things.

Anonymous said...

"LOL Spend a lot of time there, do you?"

Am I supposed to be ashamed for renting porn in the 2000s?

Maya said...

I didn't know what Madingo was, so I thought I'd google it. Accidentally hit images instead of web...

Truth said...

"All of which you immediately rented."

LMAO:

Sviggey, Da youngstas ain't respeckin' yo rep-a-tation like dey used to homeboy!

You gon' hafta come wit' a Kyzer Soze'an show of force!

Svigor said...

All of which you immediately rented.

Please don't tell anyone?