At the end of chapter 6, Rice argues that since white culture has appropriated black culture, cool can have a negative connotation meaning oppression at the cultural, economic and political levels. Rice begins by explaining cool is culturally constructed from different sources such as government, media, religion and literature. Then Rice explains that cool orginated from an African word and most likely came to American from the slave trade. After explaining how knowing the background of cool may alter our perceptions of the word, Rice draws support for his argument with details from Amiri Baraka’s book Blues People. Baraka believes because the white race dominates culture, it has appropriated black music into the white culture denying the original black artist credit, royalties and power in society.
American culture is based on the culture of Africans and Black Americans. Because of racism and prejudices starting during the slave trade and ending with desegregation in the late 60s, the white race appropriated black culture. Whites took fashion styles, word phrases, and music styles from Black Americans and incorporated it into their own culture denying Black Americans the credit they disserved. By doing so, Black Americans were powerless in society because they received little or no money from their songs.
In chapter 7, appropriation is related to Hip-Hop music. In this example of appropriation, Djs are incorporating sounds and words from different music sources to create a new composition, a process called sampling. Public Enemy is one Hip Hop group that uses sampling to crate “a sense of power in the African-American community” (60). By incorporating samples of James Brown, Bob Marley, and Martin Luther King, Jr., Public Enemy illustrated how appropriation can be used to enhance a message and reach out to audiences in new ways.
Sampling is a creative form of expression made by incorporating various types of medium in order to crate a new and different message. It differs from plagiarism because its original purpose has changed and altered.
