Wow!!! I wrote that last post b4 seeing what a twist this topic took.I don't want to get it all heated up again, but I must say I was really sad to see those: "Why can't we all live together?", "colorblind", "no black consciousness" etc.
Not only is it naive to say: "we're all the same", it's also ignorant and offensive (even if unintentionally). By saying: "shut up, don't be proud of your heritage, don't mention racism, we're all the same" you are denying people's self-expression, denying their culture, denying the injustice they suffer/ have suffered or even that their people have suffered in the past. There's no way you can create a just society by trying to wipe out everbody's and every group's individual identity and say they should all be the same. That's fascism and that's dangerous.
The fact that Prince's catalogue includes both Race and Family Name makes it richer and more interesting to me (and my surname is Pearlman!!!). Specific questions about reverse intolerance can be relevant (Is Family Name slightly antisemitic? Possibly, jury's still out...) but that doesn't make it okay to start saying: "Prince should ignore his black heritage and embrace everybody".
The final and main point is that that would be absurd! If P ignored his black heritage, he wouldn't be interested in JB, Funkadelic, Hendrix, Stevie or Miles. It's cool that he can incorporate Joni, Beatles, Stones even Elvis. You can and should see yourself as part of all humanity, but that doesn't mean you can't belong to a sub-category too, a culture, people, nation etc.
(Maye the fact that, as a Jew, I've experienced my own share of prejudice and injustice and am also proud of my own cultural identity makes this easier to see - those part of the dominant culture who can't see this should tak a good look round).

Me being Swedish I have felt pressure from the dominant culture (Chinese) holding me back. They should examine themselves.

This racial shift in conciousness started at least 10 years ago.

Spike Lee asked in an interview he did during his years about a criticism Spike had once had about Prince not showing any black women in his videos (remember at one time their depictions as love ineterests, sex symbols, etc. were woefully inadequate).

Prince's response was something to the affect that he's matured and grown in his conciousness. Emancipation had just been released and he NPS was looming at this time, I believe.

And on Emancipation, the song "style" blew me away when he said "Style, is when all black men are free...." The Prince I knew during the 80's portrayed himself as racially nuetral almost, and definately someone who wanted all races to be represented (remember he picked a so-so white drummer over several more talented black ones for his band, The Revolution).

During the 90's Prince moved away from the sort of idealistic racial harmony into more racially "aware" rehtoric. His remake of "When will we be paid" is a prime example. It took themes evident in "The Sacrifice of Victor" and other songs, and solidified his affirmation of the "black struggle". The 90's Prince was very much more aware (or at least more admitting) that unfortunately in our society, to get people to fully embrace racial harmony, you have present your race's view, and represent it in the media.

I believe TGRES had a black model, etc. So, his shift in to less "nuetral" screaming-like-a-white-girl language when concerning race has been in the making for years.

It would be interesting to see if someone like Madonna could get away with "shake your ass like a black girl" on the dance floor.

Is there something culturally prestigious about sweat?

wasitgood4u said:

Thank heaven somebody understands.

People sharing a common heritage and expressing all the joys and pains of that experience does not inhibit a person's realization that they are a part of all humanity. It's not about sitting around wringing our hands saying "poor me" and it's not about "get whitey" either. I agree that your personal experience probably enables you to better relate.

Family Name? It certainly is relevant to call the lyrics of that particular song into question as the historical reference is inaccurate. From what I've read and been told by friends, many Jewish immigrants were in fact, unable to retain their family names. I don't know if he was aware of this when he wrote the song.

This thread went from a simple observation by the original poster to all sorts of mischaracerizations of black consciousness and degenerated from that point. Your post displays clarity, sensitivity, insight and thoughtfulness and I appreciate it.

of course he is aware that is what he is !

It seems funny to some to think that there may be a message in his work, with some of the crazy lyrics he puts out. There's an exceleent book on the politics or 'consciousness', that i've always found running through P's music.

Check it out:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/e...70-7722341

Om

wasitgood4u said:

Well-said post. This happened to be one of smartest posts I read on this thread. I think that the people from the dominant culture should listen and learn a thing or two from the subculture or minorities rather than tried forcing their "We are the world and racism/slavery are in the past" ideas or accusing people to be whinners based on the fact that people experience prejudiced or racism firsthand. But at the same time, I am not going to make excuses for anyone who used racism as an excuse to suceed in life but on the other hand people have to work ten times as hard than others to get where they at and unfortinutely sometimes because of your different race, religion, etc. After all, it barely been over forty years since the Civil Rights Movement.

Speaking of this for those of you who have FX channel Ice Cube is going to have a very interesting documentary called Black and White. It is about two families, one black and other white, will be living for a few weeks switching races and live experience to be a different race. Maybe those of you who acting so-colorblind should take a look at this and learn a thing or two from this. For more information visited http://www.fxnetworks.com. Unfortinutely, sometimes people will finally get it once they be in someone's else shoes for a change.

BTW are u any relation to Rhea Pearlman from Cheers? That is my girl and she is so cool. I think her and Danny Devito makes a cute couple and who cares what Hollywood thinks of them.
[Edited 3/5/06 10:51am]

Why do some people get so bent out of shape when conscious Blacks want to promote their heritage in a proud way? What's the fear?

ChristopherTracyParade said:

I agreed. When Italians, Irish, Jews, Latinos, and others doing it called cultural pride and when black people doing the same thing it is racist. Well if people have problem of me expressing my culture identity they can kiss my ya know what.

dewalliz said:

dewalliz said:

Reading all of this...

I'm reminded of the day when this dude asked me "Why do Blacks need to have BET? ...I then asked him Why do Latinoes need Telemundo?


He kind of shut the hell up after that.

Just a couple thoughts to add:

VelvetJ said:

In the context of both PR & UTCM and the lack of black faces--I believe that to be an accurate representation of the location/time period depicted. I grew up in Iowa (right next to Minnesota) and to this day I don't think there are any blacks in my hometown. There are no Jews, or Puerto Ricans, etc, either. It's pretty much all whites, maybe a few Mexicans...the antithesis of diverse. I also lived in Cannes, France for 4 months (which is 30 minutes from Nice/UTCM). I would say that there are definitely not many blacks there either. So the fact that there aren't many blacks in those movies makes sense to me (I didn't say I liked it--it just seems to be an accurate depiction of the population.)

(This next part is in response to the thread at large, not just VelvetJ)
Now, it terms of Prince & black consciousness, my opinion is that of course, he has always been aware of being black. But I do think (as others have also said) that Prince may have chosen to downplay this aspect. Particulary if he wanted to market to a wider (e.g. white) audience. Unless he specifically explains his rationale, all we as fans can do is speculate based on past interviews and such. Which, again, being a Prince fan, must be taken with a grain of salt as he often contradicts himself.

Personally, I think in his earlier years Prince was just fucking with the system--he wanted to force people to respect/see him as a musician--not a black musician. So perhaps he downplayed his blackness, and hence ambiguous lyrics such as "am I black or white; am I straight or gay?" To paraphrase Dr. King, he wanted to be judged on the content of his music, not the color of his skin. Also, remember at around this time even though Prince was with the mostly white Revolution, he was also writing music for The Time (black), Vanity 6 (mixed) and Shelia E. (Latina).

During the early 90s Prince definitely started to incorporate more of the popular "black" style into his music--by this I mean the use of rappers/hip-hop. But again, even though "founded" by urban blacks, one could argue this style (rap/hip-hop) was not strictly 'black' given that white artists such as Debbie Harry (way back in the day), Vanilla Ice, and the Beasties had already incorporated it into their music. To me this era was when Prince started to become a follower more than a leader musically (but that's another discussion entirely).

I think that black consciousness, in terms of black pride/civil rights/etc. started to appear in Prince's music shortly after this. Two songs that immediately come to mind are "Race" from Come and "We March" from TGE. Race, to me, is in the same vein lyrically as Controvesy in that it is about being seen as human rather than black or white (straight/gay), and then of course, We March is much more civil rights based. As to why he started incorporated more obvious references to black consciousness, I can only guess. From what I remember black pride & consciousness seemed really prevalent in the early 90s. (Spike Lee's Malcom X, Get on the Bus came out a few years apart, South Africa finally abolished apartheid in 94, the Million Man March, etc.), maybe Prince was going with the flow. Don't misinterpret that last part --as I stated earlier, I think Prince has always be conscious of his blackness, he just didn't wear it on his sleeve.

Now, of course, Prince has been around long enough that no one can touch him. He can do what he wants and doesn't have to answer to anyone. He is free to write that kind of music he wants and it's on him whether he wants to make something he feels will be commercially successful or not. He would probably want both, but hey, if it's not a commercial success, it's not like his record label will fire him.

Just my

jone70 said:

This is a great post. Thank you.

dewalliz said:

I'm always interested in the rational for this...and I've asked it before on the org. Does one ever become far enough removed or so mixed that cultural pride is sort of irrelevant? As I just alluded to in my previous post, I grew up in a tiny town where everyone has pretty much the same background --mixed French/Irish/German. When I moved to Chicago everyone asked me, "What are you?" I would respond by saying, "I'm American." but that was not good enough. They would say, "No--but where are parents/family from?" so I would reply, "I'm 4th generation Iowan." They didn't really like that answer, but they got the point. I don't consider myself French/Irish/German/American. I'm just American... My family doesn't follow any French/Irish/German traditions or speak any languages other than American English so I don't identify with those cultures. Now I can see if your parents came to the US from Italy and you still speak Italian at home (one generation removed), but after a certain amount of time, don't you just become American? (And by the way, I am not really patriotic so I don't get too excited about American cultural pride either.)

jone70 said:

Ask that to EVERY Black person whose ancestors help build the United States...but ask them that RIGHT after they were just pulled over by a white cop and their ONLY crime was DWB - Driving While Black.

jone70 said:

That is your choice that you choose to call yourself American, unpatriotic, whatever. People can pressured you all they want for you to choose who u are but in the end only YOU determine that. If you think your culture is irrevelent thats ur business but not everyone feels the same.

But what I dont like is when some ignorant people trying to decide who I am or that I am racist or too ethnic for openly expressed my hertiage. Personally I am feel like I am denying myself and disrespecting my ancestors for just called myself American. American is my homeland and part of my culture, but it isn't entirely my identity. Now, I am all for people consider themselves to be just as long I received the same respect. Aight?

ChristopherTracyParade said:

I empathize with your example--but I think you are sort of missing my point. My ancestors helped build the US, too. (Yes, I know they weren't FORCED to come here, but they were all farmers so they know about hard work.) Being pulled over solely because one is black is wrong--no doubt about it--but how does that make one not American? (I know the answer--because the one being pulled over is not being treated with the same equality as other non-black Americans.)

For personal reasons,which I don't want to go into, I never felt like I belonged anywhere, not to a specific group or culture--even though on the outside, I looked like everyone else in my hometown I never really felt like I fit in there. I guess that's why I never understood the desire to identify so strongly with a certain culture or group...

I'm not trying to start any fights or belittle anyones experiences...I'm just interested in why people have such an inherent need to categorize themselves (or others) into specific groups or cultures. (The same is true when speaking of artists/musicians or even sororities & fraternities.)

dewalliz said:

Cool, thanks for explaining, I really like the way you articulated that. As I just posted b/f responding to you, I'm interested in this inherent compulsion people seem to have to categorize everyone/everything.

jone70 said:

Sometimes people categorize themselves for belonging, cultural identity, common interests, and other reasons, nothing wrong with that. Even open-minded and free-spirited people like myself belong with the same group of people who have the same beliefs of being open-minded and free-spirited. Like for example one of my best friends who lives out in LA has culture ties to El Salvador. SHe and I are totally from different worlds and cultures but the reason why our friendship still last after 11 years is because of respect and we dont tear each other down because of our differences....also we learned a lot of things from each other. Thats how it was with my old high school crew despite we were viewed as outcasts by the HS social scene but that is another topic. It would be nice if the world would be like that but nope thats not reality.

Also, Prince TOURS Places that in the PAST WOULD NOT aow Black Performers so Freely and he aso has done stops and I can mention on the 2002 tour where the arena was kinda in a POOR part of Town. For me I got to see GHETTOS and POVERTY SECTIONS and It's NOT SOMETHING I USUALLY SEE. Prince has OPENED UP OUR EYES to SEE that MAYBE SOME OF US AREN'T SO FORTUNATE, MAYBE SOME OF US NOT SO PROSPEROUS and To PRAISE GOD FOR ALL OF OUR BLESSINGS IN LIFE.

jone70 said:

Firstly, thanks and my pleasure to babynoz and dewalliz for their responses to my post above.
As for jone70:
With the hope of not repeating myself, it wouldn't surprise me if the points in the two paragraphs above are connected. You seem to have grown up without inheriting a strong cultural heritage/identity. This could easily make you feel like you don't belong anywhere, and also could make it difficult for you to respect and even comprehend other people's cultural strength. Each culture is different and has its own values and attributes to offer, but embracing your heritage can allow you to discover wisdom, spirituality, knowledge and artistic creation which can nourish and sustain who you are, as well as give you a foundation to appreciate and absorb other cultures. Taken to an extreme, that could be limiting (and there are endless examples of "ethnic pride" turning into ethnocentric intolerance), but it can also be liberating, allowing a rich context and strong basis from which the individual can construct his/her own sense of self, and discover her/his own means of expression.
Hope that helps some.

About the early part of Prince's career I think in many ways Prince was kind of an alternative Pop artist, n there is enough Pop in his career to say that and an he was also kinda off the wall and controversial in his early years. I personally think its just a bit of a assumption when people assume that he was totally fake or doing stuff he didnt want to do in those days just to get sales, but then again to some degree i think all or at least many artists do that, hence the words "Music Buisiness"),

I think as someone pointed out earlier if you look at that period he was in many ways living out his Jimi Hendrix and Sly fantasies, I can see that.

Besides from this he still managed to be fairly experimental, creative,original, and adventurous in the material he put out in those days so I dont think its as if he was doing stuff he wasnt really into, there may have been some gimmick but in Pop music there always is, so nothing new there.

Prince in his early days I think was the kinda artist who didnt want to be pigeonholed, that is also one reason he went for the ambiguous projection,
look at songs like Controversy and Uptown the lyrics show that spirit of Im young, Im idealistic and I dont wanna conform and i'll do what I want ...

Uptown: "but where I come from we dont give a damn we do whatever we please,if I go downtown nowhere bound everybody drag its all about bein free" "white black portarican everybody just a freakin,good times were rolling"



So this is all from the pen of Prince himself, Im not suprised there have been changes in his career, he was still very young when he started out and like many people when you are young you have certain ideals, you want to be an individual and original and different and we see clearly that young spirit in early Prince.

As with many people who were more radical in there youth as they get older they become more conservative so perhaps this in ways what has happened with Prince,
Prince has taken up JH and become more conservative like most people as they get older.

If I happen to generally prefer those years when he had that youthful and creative spirit to maybe when i think he started losing the plot at times musically like when he tried pretending to be a macho homeboy rapper etc
then I think thats just musical preferences its not about racial issues his race has always been the same and so has his influences.

As far as everything else concerned about pride and heritage Man thats all Cool i dont see it as an issue , i dug Hendrix, James Brown, and lots dif artists long time before i even heard of Prince.
[Edited 3/6/06 6:33am]
[Edited 3/6/06 6:36am]

OskarKristio said:

I really dig this post.

Romera said:

Romera,you are on a roll!

DavidEye said:

Hello beautiful.


People want dude to be free and then when he talks about what the hell he wants to talk about, they want to box him in. Common sense would say to me that there is a reason Prince is addressing issues of race. My thinking is that he experienced some level of racism in the industry that caused him to re-examine what it means to be a black person in this country. Maybe someone close to him told him he was trippin' on the rose-colored glasses thing. Trust me, I went through my own period of self-examination so I can dig where he's coming from.

I can sit up here and say I'm colorblind and all that doesn't matter but by the end of the day, I'll be damned if someone doesn't remind me of my skintone.

[/quote]


I see what your saying above but I think its actually a bit of an over genralisation, what I mean is I dont think its necessarily like the example u suggested with Jone, I have witnessed cases where individuals who do come from fairly strong culturalheritage /identity's yet they dont really feel very connected or identify strongly with there heritage, so i guess what Im saying is this can very well be an individual choice thing as much as it can be for any given reason.
Im not saying there is anything in the world wrong with people learning and being connected with there heritage Im just saying I think it can be an individual choice thing, as You know there are people from very Jewish families who go on in there own life to have not particuliary strong Jewish identities, some of them even become Budhists like the guys from BeastieBoys , So I guess it just depends.
[Edited 3/6/06 7:36am]

OskarKristio said:

I see what your saying above but I think its actually a bit of an over genralisation, what I mean is I dont think its necessarily like the example u suggested with Jone, I have witnessed cases where individuals who do come from fairly strong culturalheritage /identity's yet they dont really feel very connected or identify strongly with there heritage, so i guess what Im saying is this can very well be an individual choice thing as much as it can be for any given reason.
Im not saying there is anything in the world wrong with people learning and being connected with there heritage Im just saying I think it can be an individual choice thing, as You know there are people from very Jewish families who go on in there own life to have not particuliary strong Jewish identities, some of them even become Budhists like the guys from BeastieBoys , So I guess it just depends.
[Edited 3/6/06 7:36am]
[/quote]

a) u can be buddhist AND have strong Jewish identity, which I think Adrock and the gang do
b) I would even say that having a strong cultural background helped give them the courage and ability to create and explore (with an emphasis on "helped" and remember their cultural background is not just "Jewish" it's also "being from Brooklyn" for example)
c) yeah, whatever, I'm not laying down rules that hold in all cases, and I mentioned that ethnic identity can also be stifling, specially if it's rammed down your throat or projected in a limiting, intolerant or ethnocentric framework. I know people who've reacted the other way and thrown off a cultural connection they thought was constricting (it never works, BTW, IMHO, and eventually the "harmonious" world reminds you rudely of where u come from even if u don't want 2 remember). Each case is different, I was just responding to a vibe I was getting from Jone.

OskarKristio said:

Shit - the computer lost me this cool reply I wrote, I'll try 2 summarize:
BBs can be strongly Jewish AND buddhist, and it may be interrelated (they're strongly "from Brooklyn" 2!)
I was just responding to a vibe I got from Jone, I agree that over-constricting and intolerant ethnic identity can lead 2 the opposite result (altho the "harmonious" world usually rudely reminds u of where u come from, even if u want 2 forget...). It's all individual, and it's all about what u do with it.
[Edited 3/7/06 1:57am]