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Cakewalk Is Racist

Adam Grossman

By Adam Grossman
in The Coffee House

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MediaGary

MediaGary

Posted
Posted (edited)

Many people never get past the inflammatory headlines and thread titles, so I'm posting the descriptive article that won't simply cut/paste from the a source website. 

The source website displays a large portion of a book called:

Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake
A Social and Popular Dance Reader
Edited by Julie Malnig (C) 2009
Pages displayed by permission of University of Illinois Press

The specific chapter that mentions Cakewalk starts on page-55. That chapter is :

"Just Like Being at the Zoo"  /  Primitivity and Ragtime Dance
by Nadine George-Graves

I think the fair-use practices will allow me to type out and paste this portion of the chapter here.  I'll remove it if there's any issue, but the web link is below the re-typed part that I've provided here.  I added paragraph breaks for ease of reading, as the original page-56 has no breaks in it.

The Cakewalk was the most popular black social dance to influence the social dancing of the ragtime era. In fact, many early rags are Cakewalks, and the Cakewalk's syncopated rhythms directly led to ragtime musics's style. The Cakewalk had its roots on the Southern plantation when slaves would get together and hold contests in which the winners would receive a cake often provided by the master. The style of dancing had many influences, including African competitive, Seminole dancing in which couples paraded solemnly, and European dancing and promenading that the slaves witnessed in the big house.

The Cakewalk was a mockery of these European styles, but when the slaves performed for the whites, their masters often mistook the playful derision for quaint approximations of their dances. In this couple dance, dancers stood side by side, linked arms at the elbow, leaned back and pranced about high-stepping and putting on airs (figure 3.1). The men usually wore suits with tails, top hats, canes, and bow ties. The women wore long dresses, heels, and often carried a parasol.

Cakewalks were a regular feature in minstrel shows and black vaudeville, and because of the influence these traveling shows had on popular dancing, the Cakewalk quickly made its way to Northern dance halls. The Cakewalk led the way for Southern black dances to gain popularity in the North, thereby playing a seminal role in the creation of ragtime dance.

[https://www.google.com/books/edition/Ballroom_Boogie_Shimmy_Sham_Shake/zCSDBjRqC5EC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=cakewalk+slavery&pg=PA56&printsec=frontcover]

Edited by MediaGary
fixed spelling of 'that'
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bayoubill

bayoubill

Posted
Posted

Today people believe what they’re taught in school, watch on TV, the news, second hand information, rumors , hearsay, but very little facts

I Am sure you guys and Christian don’t want my opinion about anything on this Fred

I go by actual experiences and what I have seen in my life and very much don’t care what anyone thinks 

I will say I Am white from Louisiana

and very proud of both due to the people I have known  here 

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Lee Shapiro

Lee Shapiro

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Posted

Really, don't we have enough REAL things to be concerned about.
This post is just a useless click-bait article, taking advantage of all the hostility and division in this country.  Do we really need to pile on sh!t on top of sh!t?

You said you were just "making a fun little post",  well judging from the responses, it had the exact opposite effect.  DELETE IT!
 

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Craig Anderton

Craig Anderton

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Posted
14 minutes ago, Gswitz said:

Is it racist or subversive? They knew the history when they choose the name. Cakewalk was always subversive to counterculture and benign to those in power.

I dunno...Cakewalk seems a pretty subversive choice, given the predominance of European sequencers :)

"The Cakewalk was a mockery of these European styles, but when the slaves performed for the whites, their masters often mistook the playful derision for quaint approximations of their dances."

For what it's worth I stopped using master/slave in writing years ago, not because anyone told me to, but because we have better, more descriptive options. Saying a device is "synchronized" makes a whole lot more sense than saying it's a "slave."

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bayoubill

bayoubill

Posted
Posted (edited)

I several times referred to Bapu as master Bapu. In my book he is a master bassist. If anyone perverts it to mean anything else or expects me to adjust or change MY choice of words   ,,,,,,,    censored  ....   (reworded)  they are mistaken

Edited by bayoubill
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craigb

craigb

Posted
Posted

Anyone using CNN as a "source" needs to start using their brain instead.  I've saved several instances where they literally show the exact opposite of what really happened (I save the actual video as well).  They've gotten so bad (especially after some videos of their employees talking have come to light) that they are close to losing their "news" designation and may soon have to be called an "entertainment" channel.

Since this thread will be locked down very soon, I thought about this, decided against it, then changed my mind again.  Here are MY opinions, which I have no problem standing behind:

First a short story.  We used to have an immigration attorney firm as one of our IT clients (I met lots of good people there over the last four years).  Needless to say, their staff is made up of many different colors and cultures.  Once, as I was walking by the front desk, there were about a dozen people chatting and the main receptionist made the comment "Well, Craig's not a racist!"  I stopped and corrected her.  "Actually, I must admit I AM a racist!"  (That got a few breath intakes.)  She figured I was probably joking and pointed at one of the attorneys down the hall who happens to be black and said "What?  You have a problem with someone like Kenny?"  To which I replied "No, we're the same race!"  She naturally followed with "But, he's black and you're not..."  So I explained: "Black and white are only colors.  We're both from the human race.  I just have a problem accepting extra-terrestrials."  That made several of them chuckle and then go "Ahh..."  They had never thought of it that way.

Next, a second story from about 25 years ago.  As I was walking by a large cubicle, someone said "Hey, let's ask Craig!"  So, this one young lady (who was black, a prior model and a sharp business analyst) asks me "Do you ever watch BET?"  I replied that I didn't have a clue what that channel was.  She looked at the others and said "See?"  then turned to me and said it was Black Entertainment Television.  So I told her that I would never watch a racist channel.  It had never even occurred to her that the name of the channel itself was the very definition of racism.  I told her that the test was simple:  What would happen if a channel called White Entertainment Television was created?  People would be in an outrage.  The discussion went on to the very popular term (back then) of African-American and whether that sounded better than saying "black."  I replied that there was nothing wrong with it for those with dual citizenship from those countries.  She smirked a little and asked "So, I shouldn't call myself that?"  I asked where she lived in Africa fully knowing that she was born and raised in the good 'ol U. S. of A. (in fact she's related to a baseball player, ended up marrying one and has both Mohammed Ali's daughter and Ken Norton's daughter as two of her best friends).  She said that it didn't have to mean you had citizenship, that it indicated a cultural heritage.  My reply was "Ah, ok.  In that case, please refer to me as a Dutch-English-American then."  Then, after her puzzled, but inquiring pause, I added "What?  Do we all look alike?"  That got a good laugh but, as I said, she was a very sharp girl and liked the points made.

As an interesting addendum to that last story, if you go back far enough into history, then we're ALL supposed to be "out of Africa" since that's supposedly the birth place of humans (sorry "Native Americans," but you're just older immigrants to America - via the ice bridge between Alaska and Russia from what I've read).

The final nail in my coffin might be this:  I look at everything going on and it ALL screams of an agenda.  Everything is backwards.  You have a bunch (of well meaning and, from what I've seen, nice) enthusiastic people wanting to be anti-racist while aligning themselves in a racist group (for the same reasons mentioned above).  You have another bunch of soon-to-be prison inmates going around claiming to be anti-Facists when they are the very definition of Facism.  Next you get a lot of glorification for a convicted criminal, repeat offender who happened to get murdered (yes, murdered) during the process of committing a Federal crime while on drugs and resisting arrest.  In case you don't know, both Floyd and the officer that killed him worked at the same nightclub (Floyd as a bouncer and Chauvin as security in his off-time).  There's no way in my mind that they didn't know each other and I wouldn't be surprised if the charges get rightly upgraded to 1st degree murder.  If you look at Chauvin's record, he has a lot of complaints (18?) with some requiring disciplinary action.  Neither should be used as examples for anything let alone what they've been painted to stand for.  

We're ALL originally from the same stock (unless you also believe that there was a second, master race - which there IS some evidence of...).  Our uniqueness in color, cultural heritage and spirituality/religion is currently being used against us purely to cause division.  As Julius Cesar said, "Divide and conquer!"  I have faith in mankind (which, also, is NOT a sexist statement... *sigh...*) that eventually people will resume thinking for themselves and realize who the real puppet-masters are and what they're trying to do to everyone else.  Unfortunately, we're dealing with more than one generation that has been seriously brain-washed primarily by school teachers and mass media into being idiotic sheep.  90% of the comments I read on various social sites merely spit out opinions that were provided by mass media, the vast majority of which are exactly opposite of reality.  Oh well...  there's so much more, but I think I've sealed the lock, ya?  And you now have my opinion on all this stupidity.

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Christian Jones

Christian Jones

Posted
Posted

I was thinking the other day, as I was looking at my guitar amp and looking at its Master knob which stands for master volume, that it'd be cool if that knob said Massa as it does incidentally have another amp slaving to it 

29 minutes ago, craigb said:

but I think I've sealed the lock, ya?

And a squirt of super glue 

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