Pat’s Polemics

You can be fooled when you assume a White person has an intimate relationship with Black people simply because they can actually clap in time to Black music. Don’t get me wrong: it can be a clue, but only a clue. Case in point: Lee Atwater, top Republican campaign advisor who came up with the notoriously racist Willie Horton add for George H.W. Bush. Lee Atwater used race like a rapier, honed in South Carolina in Jesse Helms campaigns. Atwater demonstrated the arc of racialized campaigning with the slogans: “In the 50s we could shout N! N! N!.” Then we could use that word anymore so we shouted, “Crime in the streets! Crime in the streets!” in the 60s, but everyone knew who we were talking about. Then that grew toxic, so in the 70s we shouted, “High taxes, high taxes” but everyone knew who we were talking about.
BUT……. Lee Atwater fronted a Black rhythm and blues band on guitar and he sang and, based on several hundred hours sitting in a Black Pentecostal church, I can say his performance was totally Black. I will note that on his death bed Atwater apologized.
The Clintons are the other side of that: they were frequently seen in Black churches, campaigning, and both clapped in time to the music. Their policies tended toward support of Black rights.
So what does all that mean? Can we use it in assessing our candidates? I don’t believe so. But music and dance have always been a point of friction between Blacks and Whites and a magnet that attracts them together. Elements of each musical and dance culture can repel and/or attract…. note the ‘and/or’.
Europeans encountering African dance were scandalized by the way Africans danced with their hips, seeming to simulate sexual intercourse, while the Africans were scandalized when Europeans sorted themselves out into pairs of male and female and then hugged each other closely and pranced like that around the dance flooor. The closest thing to sex on the dance floor the Africans had ever seen.
Now we combine them, pairing up male and female (often) and moving with our hips while grasping each other – not a bad cultural mix. Sexual? An old Baptist preacher once proclaimed, “We ain’t again’ dancin’ so much as again’ what dancin’ leads to.” He had it right, didn’t he?