My “style” is (in part) to challenge claims, such as yours, which strike me as dubious.
(*the following statements reflect my own experience with black culture, which may be atypical…)
Interesting thing is, a lot of these things that you list as ‘black culture’ are not as ‘black culture’ as a lot of folks may think. I think that is mostly t.v. when you see guys with gold teeth. The guys I know don’t have them, save a few of the more extreme thuggish ones.
As for saggy pants, the pants are getting much more fitted now. See, they don’t do the saggy pants anymore, but the white kids in Peoria are still doing it, thinking it is black culture. Once they catch up, in a couple years, their jeans will be ‘tight’ like the black kids in NYC, and someone will complain that they don’t like the ‘black’ culture of tight jeans.
ETA: Liking black pop Jamaican culture but not black American culture boggles my mind. Seriously, they are extremely intertwined.
They’re deliberate stereotypes, served up with a wee drop of hyperbole, used for the purpose of illustrating a point. You could erase ‘gold teeth’ and replace it with ‘sports team cap worn sideways and at an angle’, or ‘saggy pants’ with ‘obscenely large gold jewelry’ and the point would still be valid.
Ya’ think? We must be visiting two completely different Jamaicas. I get to Jamaica (and Grand Bahama, and St. Lucia) about two or three times a year, and I don’t see any similarities in the American black pop culture (meaning primarily the urban/hip hop/rap aspects of it) and the Caribbean black pop culture. It’s almost like…two different countries; different slang, different clothing, different music, different attitude.
I feel really silly right now, and have to apologize. I have actually never visited Jamaica, and so shot off at the mouth stupidly.
No apology necessary. You should get out to the islands sometime. The living’s cheap and the people are amazingly friendly. The level of poverty in the non-touristy areas is staggering, but I’ve never been afraid for my watch and wallet.
What if it’s a black chick? Would you screw her then?
I am dying to go, actually. I have had to postpone several trips and decline several invitations because of my passport issues.
Jamaican-American culture and black American culture is very married, in my experience in the U.S. Meaning, reggae/dancehall is married with hip hop now. Our slangs are crossed, our parties are merged, and soul food / Jamaican food is a hand in hand thing where I am from. At our parties in the U.S., at our little music stores in the hood, and in our dancehalls, there is footage on huge t.v. screens of Jamaican parties in Jamaica going down. Very merged cultures.
In my eagerness to post on this topic, I neglected to consider that never having actually been to the island kind of negates me commenting on what the culture is like there.