Tues 4/11

Because of today's political correctness, many cultural and racial groups who love hip-hop cannot blatantly claim that hip-hop is their "thing" since it was originally "owned" by African Americans. I appreciate that Filipinos DJs are still acknowledging the originator while paving their way to integrate their own culture with Hip-hop. Although, I am quite concern that their way of “authenticate their involvement” is through internalizing the color-blind mentality, which greatly downplay their racial identity. Based on my own knowledge of this type of mindset, adopting the color-blind view is detrimental towards different communities of color; this means that systematic racism would get overlooked because race is not viewed as the main problem. 

Additionally, it is quite hypocritical to criticize that White institutions are contributing to the Filipino’s sense of invisibleness since Filipino Djs are also perpetuating it. However, I do not think it is a subconscious behavior; and it is frustrating to admit that this cycle of systematic racism has been deeply ingrained in almost all the aspects of our lives, that it is hard for the oppressed to undo it, but instead blindly perpetuate this matrix. In this deepness of the rabbit hole, is it even possible for the oppressed to find a middle ground or to balance in terms of assimilating and resisting into the mainstream culture? Yes, it is acculturation! However, this idea does not entail specific instructions on how to carry it out. 

In summary, this article reminds me of the complexity of the ideology acculturation, whether one’s native ethnic or cultural identity can equivalently survive with the hosts’ culture. Nope! In this context of the American culture, there are not just two players (the host vs. non-natives), but numerous thriving cultural groups that are competing with one another in additional to the host culture and this complicated the whole matrix. Based on many minority groups who had successful claim foreign cultures such as Blacks’ hip-hop as part of their communities, I wonder if future generations would still acknowledge the originators since the line between race and culture will be greatly hazy. Overall, I am just curious of how this process of integrating foreign cultures will turn out to be. Only God knows!