A Black Hole

This week’s reading talks about the nature of Black people being exiled from society as a reoccuring theme in science fiction, and it makes me thing about the natural conclusion to that logically… what does happen when Black people are gone? That in itself is a lofty question, and clearly there is a plethora of media to explore hypothetical scenarios of that happening; the end of Space is the Place implies that the world simply would not function without us, for example. But thinking about actual, real world situations where it’s proven that without Black people something could not function I started thinking about Rap music. It’s probably clear where I’m going with this, but I think it is also quite hilarious how bad some rap music can get when it’s produced by nonblack people. Not to say that all nonblack rappers are bad (there’s…eminem?), nor all Black rappers are good, but there is absolutely a reason that anyone who is a “white rapper” has to prove themselves to some degree before being taken seriously by audiences and the industry. Similarly, this is something that can also be seen in nonwestern music like K-pop, in that when rap music is divorced from both it’s origins culturally and linguistically, it is apparent that there is something missing, and it’s Blackness. This is just a small example of course, but if something as simple as a music genre can only excel with Black people, imagine what other things could fall apart without us. (Week 9)