Dispatches From the Culture Wars - Feminism, Communism & Rock 'n' Roll Edition

Beyonce breaks out; Jews of color convene; A Prince; A farewell to red-baiting; Market feminism; The segregation of rock

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'Lemonade' Is About Black Women Healing Themselves and Each Other

By Morgan Jerkins
April 26, 2016
Elle

After the politically charged single "Formation" and her Super Bowl performance, it seemed that Beyoncé was embarking upon a new stage of her career, one that would be filled with more images of black women and the violence—from heartbreak to the loss of our sons—that we face. But no one could have expected that Lemonade would not only fulfill these expectations but also round out to be an exhortation, a luxurious one-hour-long story that focused solely on black women and their relationship to the earth and to each other. It showed black women being not only strong, but strength personified. Yet the "strong black woman" trope was not the message here. On the contrary, this was the story of the resilient black woman, one who is never rigid but explores her emotions.

Beyoncé has declared herself a feminist, despite much criticism. And Lemonade's feminism focuses on black women's stories and the world around them. In the visual album, black women's emotions, especially those that stem from mistreatment by men, are expressed among and through the healing atmosphere of the natural environment. Take how water, a symbol of wisdom, transition, and metamorphosis repairs hurt: Beyoncé dives into deep water as she realizes how much she has sacrificed for her man. Then she treads through water with several black women, asking why that man would deny himself of all that she can give.
 

Jews of Dolor Defy America’s Obsession with Identity Politics

By David Kaufman
April 27, 2016
New York Post

An estimated 10 to 12 percent of American Jews are multiracial or non-white. Of course, from Burma to Baghdad, “Jews of color” have existed long before their Ashkenazi counterparts settled across Europe and into the United States. In fact, outside of America, a majority of world Jewry is at least part Mizrahi or Sephardic — the darker-hued descendants of Jews who fled to the Muslim World following the Spanish Inquisition in 1492. There are also Ethiopian Jews, a black-skinned minority who mostly settled in Israel after emigrating in the 1980s and ’90s.

What’s different about this new generation of multiracial Jews, however, is how they’re increasingly — and publicly — embracing their Judaism. Indeed, at a time when both mainstream Jewish and minority groups remain mired in conventional notions of who is “their own,” these Jews directly challenge the American obsession with identity politics and “one-drop” nonsense.


Prince, the Secret Philanthropist: 'His Cause Was Humanity'

By Kory Grow
April 25, 2016
Rolling Stone

It began with an anonymous check about 10 years ago. Environmental and human rights activist Van Jones was working on George W. Bush's Green Jobs Act when he received a $50,000 donation and no name attached to it. "I promptly returned it," he recalls. "I'm not taking anonymous checks for $50,000. It could be from anybody." But then someone sent it back, and he returned it again.

Eventually Jones received a call from a rep for the donor: "I cannot tell you who the money is coming from, but his favorite color is purple." Jones laughs. "I said, 'Well, now you've got another problem, because now I'm not going to cash the check, I'm going to frame it.'" The story got back to the man who wrote the check, Prince, who found it so funny he called Jones up and befriended him.

That's when Jones learned about Prince's secret other gig: philanthropist.
 

Who’s Afraid of Communism?

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By Malcolm Harris
April 27, 2016
New Republic

The story of communism’s struggle against fascism and white supremacy has been repressed for generations, but this grip on our collective memory is slipping fast. David Simon is planning a series about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade—American leftists who fought against fascism in Spain. Steve McQueen is doing a Paul Robeson biopic, whose 1956 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee is already the most cinematic thing I’ve ever heard. When asked about his membership in the Party, he invoked the Fifth Amendment (“Loudly”), at great personal cost. “Wherever I’ve been in the world,” he told them, “the first to die in the struggle against fascism were the communists.”

A new poll of adults under 30 found that 51 percent “do not support capitalism.” Zach Lustbader, a college senior involved in conducting the poll, told The Washington Post: “The word ‘capitalism’ doesn’t mean what it used to.” And if capitalism isn’t the Good Guy, young people might go looking for a more nuanced version of the Cold War narrative. Hollywood might even bring it to us first. Without the anti-communist lid, it’s hard to tell what we’ll find, and how the political landscape will change.
 

Feminism For Sale

By Sarah Jaffe
April 25, 2016
New Republic

Feminism, lately, is having an identity crisis. It’s an internal struggle that goes back decades, maybe even to the beginning of feminism. Its latest battlefield is Beyoncé, whose every move leaves a thousand thinkpieces in its wake. Not just Beyoncé, either, but other high-profile women such as Sheryl Sandberg, Lena Dunham, Emma Watson, and high-end women’s conferences and binge-watchable TV from Game of Thrones to Girls, too. At the heart of the crisis is the question of whether feminism means success for a few, who ascend the ladders of wealth and power, or whether it means fundamentally changing how wealth and power are redistributed, so that ladders are no longer needed.

In a political moment that has seen thrilling, radical new movements spring up around racial justice and economic inequality, the fact that mainstream feminism still seems so enthralled with neoliberalism has been a source of deep frustration to many. And yet when we attempt to argue about issues, we get bogged down in battles over personality; pointing out that the liberation of a CEO does little for her nanny is likened to “trashing.” The personality trap is itself a function of the problem that Zeisler has put a name to in her book: marketplace feminism.
 

Like It Is: Bob Dylan Explains What Really Killed Rock ’n’ Roll

By Brent L. Smith
April 13, 2016
Medium

Last year, Bob Dylan gave only one interview about his recent live album Shadows in the Night, comprised of ten pop ballads made famous by Frank Sinatra in the late 50s and early 60s.

Was the sole interview with Rolling Stone or Vice? No — it appeared in the February/March 2015 issue of AARP.

I expected another old-guy-yelling-from-his-porch sentiment on how modern rock is boring blah blah blah (I’m looking at you, Scorsese). What I got, however, was a heartbreaking revelation of a silent assassination. Essentially:

"From its fused inception, rock ‘n’ roll was already a racially integrated American invention being blasted in teenage bedrooms as early as 1955, but as the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum going into 1960, the genre was being commercially segregated, on the sly, into white (British Invasion) and black (soul) music by the (WASPy) establishment."