Dancing around white America's embrace of hip-hop

Where to begin? Probably with Tanz's assertion that Negro "carries with it an air of respectability, dignity, old-school nobility . . . an almost quaint belief in the possibility of finding common ground between well-intentioned people of all races." The outright ahistoricality of such a claim -- and Tanz's audacity in championing a word long rejected as derogatory by those to whom it was once applied -- can hardly be overstated, never mind explained. Perhaps if he'd tested the word's ability to evoke such halcyon days by bandying it about his Brooklyn neighborhood, the resultant collection of incredulous stares and bruised body parts would have caused some rethinking.

In order to bolster the legitimacy of "Wegro," Tanz links it to a series of public people, implying their approval. He claims that author and activist William Upski Wimsatt is "one of hip-hop's best known Wegroes," then recruits actor Danny Hoch, and finally states that author Bakari Kitwana has profiled dozens of Wegroes and sees in them "the dawning of a new reality of race in America." The quote is from Kitwana's most recent book, "Why White Kids Love Hip Hop," but Tanz manipulates it to seem like an endorsement of his word.

Most objectionable, though, is the way a construct like "Wegro" reveals Tanz's inability to perceive blackness as anything but a foil for whiteness: something to study not for its own sake, but only as a lens through which to examine the souls of white folks. Consistently absent from "Other People's Property" is the kind of multifaceted conception of blackness that would allow the project of defining white hip-hoppers -- their motivations, ironies, and impacts -- to move beyond simple formulations about appropriation, voyeurism, and identity.