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(Reblogged from oneweekoneband)
To British ears, West can come across as an unbearable show-off. But in his native America, he represents the voice of a confident black middle class that will assert their self-belief in blunt terms.
Is this Telegraph writer literally implying that British people cannot bear Kanye West and the aspects of him that make him a “confident black” man? (via oneweekoneband)
There’s a (really terrible) strain of thought in British cultural criticism that basically casts American racial politics as just another symptom of American vulgarity (“unbearable show-off”). To a certain kind of Brit - nearly always white, nearly always middle- or upper-class, not always male - the American-ness of something is its cardinal difference, and any other difference articulated or explored in it is secondary. That’s what’s happening here I think.
