London Calling: Paul Gilroy, Dick Hebdige, and British Multiculturalism

Black man gotta lot a problems But they don't mind throwing a brick White people go to school Where they teach you how to be thick White riot - I wanna riot White riot - a riot of my own White riot - I wanna riot White riot - a riot of my own - “White Riot” by the Clash The winds of imperialism blow two ways. While we often focus on the impact of the colonizer on the colonized, in recent years, more and more writers have begun to also consider what colonialism has meant for imperialists on the domestic front.   Few places provide a window into this reciprocity than 1970s London.  Postwar immigration from former colonies to Britain resulted in an increasingly diverse …

Why White Southerners Are the True Victims of Racism

Like the Counting Crows, who were “Accidentally in Love,” Brad Paisley is accidentally racist.  His new country song is one of the most ersatz and unintentionally ironic pop culture meisterwerks to come down the pike in a long, long time.  And LL Cool J does possibly the strangest rap crossover cameo since Chuck D appeared on Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing," though LL appears to be more interested in assuaging the consciences of white listeners than challenging them. Racism is not often the stuff of bubblegum pop—at least not explicitly. It’s tough to stuff issues of race, ethnicity, identity, and inequality into the verse-chorus-verse format of popular music.  Yet  Paisley and LL …

We’re All the Same Except that We’re Not: A Primer on Multiculturalism

“We are extremely skeptical about ‘multicultural’ education in settings with few or no blacks,” Charles Moskos and John Butler wrote in 1996. “Indeed, without a substantial black presence, such education can detract from blacks’ opportunity by becoming a vehicle for other ‘oppressed’ groups – women, Hispanics, Asian Americans, gays and lesbians, and so on.”[1]  For the two sociologists, blacks endured the longest and most pernicious forms of discrimination, both de jure and de facto, which immigrant groups largely avoided. Moskos and Butler even blamed the rise of multiculturalism for undermining affirmative action programs for African Americans, arguing that once …

The Suburb and the Sword: Wartime Housing, Integration, and Suburbanization in Alexandria, VA, 1942-1968

For much of the post-WWII period, the tendency to describe housing as the provision of the private sector and as an inherent example of the value of free, unregulated markets  has proven pervasive. Writers like David Freund have compellingly deconstructed such arguments noting that in reality state and federal governments intervened into housing regularly.  “Postwar development politics helped convince a generation of whites that homeownership and neighborhood control rose above issues of class or party affiliation or even personal preference,” reflects Freund. Indeed in an era of “metropolitan fragmentation, restrictive zoning, and federal credit policy” that resegregated …

9/11 and Its Aftermath in Hip-hop Culture: The Hip-hop Critique of 9/11 and the Bush Administration

They wasn't aimin' at us not at my house They hit The World Trade, The Pentagon And almost got the White House. - Dead Prez The people that's most affected by this war are the so-called hip-hop generation. - Paris September 11, 2001 is a day that will forever live in infamy. Representing the largest attack on American soil in United States history, images of the towers falling reverberated around the world, imbedding themselves in the memories of millions. As Americans searched for answers, their government took bold and decisive action. President George W. Bush declared a war on terror, and began a worldwide manhunt for the perpetrators. The Patriot Act, sanctioned torture and two …

Domestic Art: Nannies, Immigrants, and Labor

While most artists find their voice in the studio, Ramiro Gomez Jr. found his in the space between two very disparate and disconnected worlds. In 2009, he left the California Institute of the Arts and moved in with a wealthy family in West Hollywood to work as a live-in nanny and care for two infants. Although nervous about his huge new responsibilities, he was also grateful and relieved to finally have some stability and a chance to rethink his artistic path. With one baby strapped to this chest and another baby slung on his hip, Ramiro found his way to the park, the un-official gathering and organizing space for maids and nannies. At first the other domestic workers didn’t know what to …

A Day Spent Listening to Talk Radio

On a drive around the great state of Georgia, I got to indulge in one of my favorite pastimes: taking the temperature of conservative talk radio.  Tuning into the AM dial is like checking into an alternate reality version of America: the commercials endlessly promote end-of-the-world survivalism; the hosts fixate on political issues and grievances that most of the rest of the country has given little, if any, thought to; and the world as these stations portray it is stuffed to the gills with robbers, rapists, child molesters, terrorists, con artists, malevolent conspiracies, and venal politicians of the most incomprehensible kind.  Talk radio is like an overweight white man stuffed into …

Double Victory: From WWII to the AVF, African Americans and the U.S. Military

In a recent exchange between right wing town crier Bill O’Reilly and former Secretary of State and Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, Powell appeared irritated at O’Reilly’s insinuation that the former Secretary voted for Obama for racial reasons. “So you basically said to yourself I’m still going to support the guy even though his economic policies haven’t worked for African Americans and pretty much anyone else,” the host argued.   Though some have described Powell’s response as hostile or angry, to this viewer he seemed the same eternally calm presence he’s appeared to be since embedding himself in the national conscience in the early 1990s. “Why do you …

A Mediating Mess: How American Post-WWII Media Undermined Democracy

Editors notes: This review originally appeared in The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture (5.2, pages 254 - 257).  Unfortunately, in its original publication, the review  misidentified Professor Morgan as Edmund rather than Edward. These errors  have been corrected here. Apologies to Prof. Edward P. Morgan for the mishap. When the Swift Boat controversy engulfed the 2004 election campaign, America’s obsession with the Vietnam War once again reared its ugly head.  Democratic candidate and decorated Vietnam Veteran John Kerry’s staunch opposition to the war upon his return from deployment drew harsh critiques from conservatives in the early 1970s and in 2004.  The …

Tropics of Meta’s Best of 2012

It has been a big year for us at ToM, as we rebooted and redesigned the site back in March and welcomed many new contributors.  (Hi, Jude, Lauren, Maryann, Nick, Adam, John, Jonathyne, & co.)  We were also lucky to see several of our pieces circulated more broadly in the online world, such as Alex’s look at the politics of Atlanta’s Beltline, Ryan’s analysis of sexuality in the films of Wes Anderson, and our roundtable discussion of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln.  Meanwhile, the manic, occasionally psychotic antics of the US election cycle prompted both mild laceration from our friend Clement, who covered the presidential conventions and debates, as well as the periodic spike in …