Performance Hierarchy (Having Fun vs. Coonery)

It seems an old battle has reared its ugly head once again.

In response to recent threads. I still need to see Fab's Ghost video.

Why is one dance considered coonery while another is elevated to classic status? Who sets the stamdard? Have you ever wondered what the Black people who were dancing thought when they saw they were being mocked in Minstrel shows? How do you think they felt about their dancing before it was mocked? I mean how they fuck can we dance? Swing was something the jigaboos did now people bite it. A lot of the best dances are brimming with sexual energy. What 's the difference between legitimate comedy and straight up coonery? When it comes to dance the South bares the brunt of insults despite a history of innovation.

Share your thoughts people.

Coonery is a Black dancing silly and retarded like. If a White person was to do said dance it would be deemed offensive. If a White person was to mimic Hammer;s dancing like Vanilla Ice its not coonery cause you actually have to know how to dance well. But Coonery requires no skill and generates cheap thrills.

To me it's all about the audience and the intent and purpose.

It is bullshit to say a man, black or otherwise, can't dance a certain way or act a certain way for any reason. The whole point of freedom is to allow a person to be themselves without judgment.

So if someone is genuinely into whatever they are doing it is fine. Coonery would be purposefully doing something for the entertainment of the white man and knowing they were laughing AT you or your expense and not genuinely into whatever it was that you are doing.

It's the ultimate contradiction that other races can do silly songs/dances, etc. but yet you come down on a black artist for being silly.

Of course this is all my opinion and it's a tough subject to address. I think Bamboozles and Chappelle are the best things to look into to understand the complexity of it all, outside of you know, books and shit.

Yeah, you both said what I was gonna say, basically

Damn I was hoping for more response but I'll work with what I have. What SRP said is what I'm talking about. When other groups do something silly it's taken as amusing but if we do the same thing it becomes coonery. It takes on an extra negative connotation. But all this stems from our needing validation from others. Respectable Black organizations were mocked in minstrel cartoons. What people need to understand is you don't need validation from someone who has no intention of respecting you. Anything different them or seen as emulation of them will be a point of derision.

SRP is Mexican and others are white so honestly they can't weigh in on this from anything but an outside and therefore imperfect perspective, just like I couldn't judge how one feels about the Spanish, or how different Hispanic cultures feel about certain acts.



Anyway, that Fab shit WAS coonery, no matter the audience. Any self-respecting black man would say that. Norm and I mix between mainstream society and counter-culture and we agree it's coonery; any black MAN (I emphasize man) would agree. Many many many artists do it though.

Tha's what my man is saying... it doesn't matter if you are black, you have no more right to say something is coonery than a white man... it's not an imperfect perspective, it's the logical perspective... something is coonery only because you feel the white man might view it as so or it doesn't conform to their standards.


People didn't struggle for civil rights and equality just to give you the right to demean your own people... that's a backwards perspective.

I mean, people are free to try to rule their own people if they feel like it but it makes it no better than when a person from another race does it.