I am fascinated by the ideas presented in Joanne Finkelstein's article Art of Self Invention: Image and Identity in Popular Culture, particularly the concepts that some behaviours, responses and emotional exchanges are based on the participant's social class. I was especially reminded by how the majority of people categorize the urban African- American culture.
While vacationing in Germany I was surprised to come upon a shop with a faux graffiti sign, playing loud rap music, and exclusively selling what we would refer to as hip hop or typical rapper style clothing, sneakers and hats. This was the popular world view of urban America. Those of us who live and work in an urban American city know this depiction is stereotypical of a type of person that does exist but is not wholly the representation of urban America. An accurate representation of urban African-Americans might include a rapper influenced African-American as well as immigrants from Africa, the Islands, middle class students, city workers, doctors, lawyers, and maybe even a governor!
Still it is discouraging that some behaviours are identified as being typical of lower class African-Americans, such as speech. How many times during the presidential campaign did you hear someone say how, 'well spoken' Obama was? Still the term 'Ebonics' typically refers to the speech patterns of lower class African-Americans. Even though many slang terms used in American culture originated in this same community. For example the word 'dog', was adopted as a term of acknowledging a friend and thus became 'dawg'. Even upper class white teens use this term now. Can it still be termed an Ebonic word if binary cultures adopt it? If it is no longer used in the social culture but still retains its original meaning? I feel that once society lets go the ideas that Freud expressed in her article we will be coming closer to a fully multi-cultural society.
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