Traditions

"Edward Armstrong. The Story of English Episode 5. YouTube.com. 27 Aug. 2009.

"White American language and culture owe much to the blacks." This starting phrase of Episode 5 reminded me of a musical I once went to in Alaska called Hairspray. When I was younger Hairspray was my favourite movie just because people would sing and dance, but I never truly understood the  importance of it. Not only is seeing John Travolta dressed up as a lady hilarious, but Hairspray is also a clear example of how Blacks have influenced the White American culture.

Hairspray is a movie about this popular television show, which is known as being the typical white people show. There is one exception. On Wednesdays this show has something called Negro Days in which only African Americans participate. After several weeks of trying to unite these two cultures the main character accomplishes it. Due to blacks inferiority at the time we would have thought that these Blacks had to adapt to the White American culture and way of singing, but on the contrary. The majority of the show ended up representing African American culture.

So how has African American culture influenced us? There is one simple example that we see everywhere: Jazz. This style of music actually originated in the South where most African Americans were and is now a huge part of American popular music. We hear it everywhere.

As the video says, there are also many words that have been incorporated into White American language that have come from African American culture. I did some further research on this out of curiosity to see what words we use today that have come from this culture. Unfortunately I found absolutely nothing useful. The only "Black" words that I found after my research were: gansta, bling, grills, hang, hood, benjamins, threads, aight, holla. crib, playa, and straight. How pathetic.

Sure, I found it funny at first, but then I realized how actually disrespectful this is. Black culture has become something that today is represented by people such as Lil Wayne or rappers similar to him, but we don't realize that this culture actually has a history and a history that has affected our white culture significantly.