{"id":42244,"date":"2014-03-11T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2014-03-11T17:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=42244"},"modified":"2014-03-10T10:22:53","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T15:22:53","slug":"everyones-a-minstrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=42244","title":{"rendered":"Everyone&#8217;s A Minstrel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You know what I can&#8217;t stand?\u00a0 Chinese violin and piano players.\u00a0 [1]<\/p>\n<p>The violin (as we understand the instrument today) and especially the piano are utterly western inventions.\u00a0 They are utterly inseparable with the development of western music, and thus art, and thus culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Ditto Japanese blues guitarists, and Arabic hip-hop artists and African opera singers, and the like.\u00a0\u00a0 [2]<\/p>\n<p>When, say, Asian or African\u00a0or Arabic people put on tuxedoes and sit in philharmonic orchestras, and\u00a0do\u00a0art assocated with western civilization, <em>while not being actual westerners <\/em>who grew up thoroughly marinated in the culture, they are essentially playing in &#8220;whiteface&#8221;, pretending to be western.\u00a0 They have no concept of these artifacts of western culture &#8211;\u00a0they don&#8217;t gather for jam session in garages, they don&#8217;t sit on street corners in the Bronx, they don&#8217;t know the feeling of Renaissance-era Italy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Wait&#8221;, you say &#8211; &#8220;adopting parts of other languages and cultures into one&#8217;s own is an essential part of humanity!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Huh.<\/p>\n<p>OK.\u00a0 I guess you could say so.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But tell it to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2014\/03\/04\/why_i_cant_stand_white_belly_dancers\/\">this joyless slagathor at the apparently-racist, nativist rag <em>Salon<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Who has, by the way, adopted a form of communication &#8211; the &#8220;opinion piece&#8221; &#8211; that is <em>not <\/em>native to her\u00a0ethnic culture.\u00a0 Why is she turning my culture into a white-face minstrel show?\u00a0 [3]<\/p>\n<p>[1] Not really . This is satire.<\/p>\n<p>[2] See 1, above.<\/p>\n<p>[3] It&#8217;s her logic, not mine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know what I can&#8217;t stand?\u00a0 Chinese violin and piano players.\u00a0 [1] The violin (as we understand the instrument today) and especially the piano are utterly western inventions.\u00a0 They are utterly inseparable with the development of western music, and thus art, and thus culture.\u00a0 Ditto Japanese blues guitarists, and Arabic hip-hop artists and African opera [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-n-e","category-culture-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42244"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42348,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42244\/revisions\/42348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}