The Burden of Racial Innocence: British-Invasion Rock Memoirs and the U.S. South
Mid-sixties British rock musicians have rationalized their firsthand experience and profitable interactions with American racial segregation by adopting a stance of racial innocence, or a belief that youth and virtue make one immune to charges of complicity with organized structures of racism. This...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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University of Groningen Press
2022-04-01
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| Series: | European Journal of Life Writing |
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| Online Access: | https://ejlw.eu/article/view/38627 |
| Summary: | Mid-sixties British rock musicians have rationalized their firsthand experience and profitable interactions with American racial segregation by adopting a stance of racial innocence, or a belief that youth and virtue make one immune to charges of complicity with organized structures of racism. This almost childlike subject-positioning disingenuously separates musicians’ expertise on African American blues from a more mature acknowledgement of the oppressive racial conditions that shaped the music, implicitly excluding them from culpability in the continued imbalance of power between black and white musicians. |
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| ISSN: | 2211-243X |