In 1957, Norman Mailer, perhaps the United States' most notions and prolific writer of the 20th century, wrote an essay entitled "The White Negro." Within this essay, Mailer argues that society "never be able to determine the psychic havoc of the concentration camps and the atom bomb upon the unconscious mind of almost everyone alive" during the post-war years. No matter how significant a life one may lead, he or she may still be doomed to die in largely insignificant ways (in a gas chamber, or in an atomic blast). For these reasons, Mailer writes about what he perceives to be rebellious, or non-conformist, behavior of African Americans in the wake of these world traumas. African Americans, for Mailer, are the source of the "hipness" (defined by hyper-sexuality, coolness, instant-gratification, among other things) that emerges in the late 50s as a way of dealing with the tragedies of the Second World War, as well as the looming threat of the Cold War. Mailer sees this behavior as a rational response to WWII, yet this is revealing: the fact that Mailer understands, and perhaps admires to an extent, this "hip" approach to life exposes the repressed fear and anxiety that white society feels during the post-war era. Mailer's perceptions of "blackness" are nothing more than baseless arguments about African American behavior, and reflect Mailer's own angst and terror regarding the modern era.
The "white negro" of Mailer's essay is an urban hipster whose "fascination and fetishizing of blackness resulted in a set of practices that reflected a white imagination: part cultural appropriation, a subtle reinforcement of segregation, and a desire to try on perceived accents of blackness." These perceptions are often racist, even if the individuals perceiving these elements of black culture claim to not be. Miley Cyrus's recent performance at the VMA's serves as an example of how Mailer's observations, with all of their implications, continue to endure and maintain relevance in contemporary society. Cyrus's recent performance lays bare both her own, and white society's, perceived accents of blackness. Through slapping a voluptuous African American woman's behind, "twerking," and exploiting white perceptions of African American sexuality, Cyrus became the "white negro," in all of its racism, of Norman Mailer's essay. As Imani Perry, a Princeton professor, noted, "'there is a sonic preference for blackness, the sounds of blackness, but there is a visual preference for whiteness in our culture.'" Cyrus took advantage of social perceptions of African American sexuality and "hipness" to further her own performance and popularity (though it arguably backfired). In doing so, Cyrus's performance was remarkably racist, and provided an insight into contemporary popular culture's, as well as white society's, imagination regarding African Americans.
http://tressiemc.com/2013/08/27/when-your-brown-body-is-a-white-wonderland/
http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/08/29/frat-rap-and-the-new-white-negro/
I heard on the radio that Miley Cyrus admitted that her performance on the VMA's was an attempt to demonstrate that she was no longer the little girl from Disney. However exploiting African American women was not the proper way to do that. Apparently Cyrus felt that to be considered an adult she had to sexualize herself. To highlight herself she highly sexualized black women. Her performance perpetuates the racist stereotype that black women are hypersexual creatures.
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