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 …

Iron Waspy Ladies: What Annette Funicello, Lilly Pulitzer, and Margaret Thatcher Tell Us about the Cold War

For me, what makes the Cold War an interesting time is not necessarily the existential conflict itself, though we all seem to agree by now that it really was not so existential as we were led to believe. Proxy wars and diplomatic brinkmanship are important to understand and exciting to contemplate, but the role that mass culture plays in shaping the world is what most interests me. It is through culture that our worlds are ordered and made meaningful. In an illustrative example of the old “celebrities die in threes” mythology, three women who show us the changing nature of the Cold War died within days of each other earlier this month. The deaths of Annette Funicello, Lilly Pulitzer, and …

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 …

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 …

Requiem for a Heems: An Obit for Das Racist

On Monday, Salon informed the public that one of rap’s most innovative groups had agreed to call it quits. That’s right, Himanshu Suri (Heems) told audience members in Munich on Sunday night that the fat lady had sung. “You guys wanna know the secret?” Heems teased. “Alright, so I’m going to do some Das Racist songs, but Das Racist is breaking up and we’re not a band anymore.” It all started with a massive joke.  Das Racist amassed Internet buzz and notoriety with the 2008 hit “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell,” in which Heems and Victor Vazquez (Kool AD) shout “I’m at the Pizza Hut!  I’m at the Taco Bell!” over an infectious beat and 80s video game zips …

Californication: Race, Ethnicity, and Unity in Twentieth Century California

In the weeks following the 2012 presidential election, the media greeted Barack Obama’s victory with a slew of articles focusing on the apparent coalition that formed around the President’s reelection campaign.  While Mitt Romney garnered a majority of white males, Obama secured clear victories among women and Asian, African, and Latino Americans.  Notably, Latino and Asian Americans threw their collective support behind the president at rates above 70% and were the only two groups whose margins for Obama increased.   Admittedly, Latino immigration has declined significantly.  As a recent Economist leader pointed out, “Fewer Mexicans now move to the United States than come back …

“A Citizen, Not an American”: Obama, Santa Claus, and the Language of Identity

I like to tune in to talk radio from time to time to see what Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Neal Boortz have to say about the issues of the day.  This was of particular interest in the aftermath of the election, as liberals were jubilant and the mainstream media was consumed with chatter about demographics and a new Democratic coalition: the left won with minorities, women, and white professionals (aka yuppies, because obviously these are three discrete groups), and the coalition on the right (which still made up nearly half the vote) was “too old, too white, too male.”  Limbaugh was bound to have a field day with this. When I checked in with Boortz, though, he seemed to be …

Crime in the City and the Curious Case of Philadelphia: Part II of the 2012 UHA

"Is their such a thing as Philadelphia exceptionalism?" asked one observer at this year's UHA.  Undoubtedly, over the past two UHA's (2010, 2012), Philadelphia has enjoyed the attentions of more than a few historians. With this in mind, ToM correspondents provide a glimpse at some of the work being done on the City of Brotherly Love.  Crime and policing emerged as another area of increased interest at this year's conference.  San Francisco's Chinatown, New York's Washington Heights, and yes, West Philadelphia provide case studies focusing on crime's influence on political mobilization, urban renewal, race relations and community activism. For part I of ToM's 2012 UHA coverage click …

A Fool Such as Biden: Point Break, Wayward Teeth, and Man Love in the 2012 Vice Presidential Debate

“This is a bunch of stuff!”  I couldn’t have said it better myself…. Wait, of course I could have. So the good people at ToM (I use both terms loosely) asked me what I thought of last night’s hellacious, knockdown, by-the-book, paint-by-the-numbers, firecracker-of-a-parent-teacher-conference. Let me tell you, this couple has fire! The way the one pretended to dismiss his younger (and better looking, mind you) partner with that scenery eating grin and broad armed expressions of dismay, while the fit one blinked those pale blue-green eyes like the emo-loving student-government-vice-president he always strived to be.  The passion between these two feels like Point Break-era Patrick …

Dog Days Classics: The Wages of Whiteness and the White People Who Love Them

July, 1956. It had been over a decade since the Carnegie Foundation solicited Gunnar Myrdal’s opinion on American race relations. A Nobel Prize in economics and Swedish citizenship rendered him an objective observer. That year James Baldwin wrote a scathing critique of what is now a long forgotten book—Daniel Guerin’s Negroes on the March. “Labor’s interests may often be identical with the Negro’s interests,” Baldwin explains, “but Mr. Guerin fails to understand that, in the light of the white worker’s desire to achieve greater status, his aims and those of the Negro often clash quite bitterly.” (Baldwin, “The Crusade of Indignation”) In the 1986, sociologists …