ABSTRACT
Alice Randall, Kara Walker, and the publishers of The Source: Magazine of Hip-Hop Music, Culture and Politics are representative of a wave of late 20th century artists who insistently create black cultural products that incorporate degrading images and narratives of black identity. These artists hold no allegiance to traditional artistic strategies of black uplift, whose historic goal has been to rework anti-black stereotypes into more positive images. Rather, these artists assert that the continued currency of racist black stereotypes is due, in part, to the failure of these strategies. In response, these black cultural producers present anti-black stereotypes in their original forms and encourage audiences not to ignore, but to explore them. People have responded to these well-known cultural producers with extraordinary acclaim and widespread censure. In this book, I explore these artists’ decision to create controversial black cultural products with racist appropriations, the effects of this work upon audiences, and the cultural implications of this production and consumption upon late 20th century racial politics.
