Actually, not quite true either.  While it’s true that country blues and doo wop were two of the four major influences of rock’n'roll, the other two were Texas swing and rockabilly — both of them “white music” through and through.  Country and gospel were also influences.  Rock’n'roll seems about 50/50 to me.  (“Pop music” is just popular music.  It’s not its own genre.  Pop once meant jazz, then it meant rock’n'roll, then it meant soul, etc.)

The first “appropriation” of country blues was by a black man, incidentally: W.C. Handy wrote the first jazz blues tune, “Memphis Blues” after having seen a man playing blues on slide guitar in a train station somewhere in the south.  He hadn’t grown up listening to it.  Goes to show the danger of conflating race and culture.

EDIT: Charleyboy herself seems to get that. For example, the way she uses phrases such as “…tricky and difficult terrain to tread…” and “…be sure to present accurate and respectful representations…” doesn’t seem compatible with the absolutism suggested by her “never okay” statement. I think she must have a narrow and non-obvious definition of “cultural appropriation”.

“Notre Dame”
and
“‘they probably have better things to worry about’”

“Star of David”
Please. I wonder how people would react if they were bumpin’ and grindin’ in orthodox style/dress. Throw in some sexy Nazis too…..

I’m an Adam Ant fan and a dressing-up apologist, and even I find that line troubling.

As I’ve been saying to ChicagoD, there are legitimate reasons to disagree with the woman’s argument.  I disagree myself.  But I do object to white men trying to define the terms on which minorities are allowed to complain about stuff like this without being accused of hypocrisy.

This is one person’s opinion on the ‘No Doubt’ video. Maybe it would be a good idea to get the opinion of more than one Native American and for the rest of us not try to speak on their behalf… they’re quite capable of doing that themselves.

Why in the world would that matter? Should he go pull a Mickey Rooney/Breakfast at Tiffanys because his grandad was never mean to Asians? 

I don’t think so.

What’s so hard to understand about that for people?

Everything about everything has shifted into a historical high-gear in the last 75-50 years, but the pace of fashion in the sense of who is wearing the dominant fashion of an era hasn’t. 

The suits we wear today are already 175 years old in basic form of trousers, shirt and jacket. The size of the lapel, which as been there all along, is a different metric of the sort that is more often measured in decades. 

The suit will probably be here another hundred years too, but I wouldn’t bet on 200 years from now.

Maybe the Fighting Irish is unique in that it seems to have been adopted by Irish-Americans themselves for a school they were heavily represented it. If Native American University called themselves the Native American Fighting Native Americans it might be similar. It’s not like the Redskins at all.

Using your same rubric, since rockabilly cats were mostly (all?) white, but are not a “race” tied up ladies wearing breastplates and feathers are not a “race” either, are they?

Stupid argument, innit?

What’s happening here is more akin to a (non-Jewish) German woman making a video bumpin’ and grindin’ in a “sexy” Jewish shtetl…..

Little Native American girls that watch this are still Native American girls when Stefani finishes goofing, and grinding and tosses away the costumes.

I didn’t realize they were trying to play some kind of Native American folk music. I thought they just wanted to act like buffoonish goofs in Native American garb (real or stereotyped) while their godawful rock music played in the background.