Last week, Minister Louis Farrakhan’s Facebook page posted video of the Nation of Islam leader discussing cultural appropriation in the rap industry.
In the clip, Farrakhan says white people are very good imitators of Black people because Black people are the original man.
“We are the original,” Farrakhan declares. “The original man and the original woman — we do not call ourselves mankind. We are the original man and those who came from us are mankind …”
The revered leader reminds the interviewers that Black people were singing spirituals on plantations, then the Blues as sharecroppers, and then white people novelized our pain. They imitated the music because it sounded good to them — but they forget the deeper messages.
“When we sang the Blues, it came from a heart, a soul and a mind that had a relationship that got broken. Now white folks say, ‘I want to sing Blues.’ He might not have a Blues kind of life … it’s a novelty for white people to sing the Blues.”
This reminds me of a white woman who was trying to impress me that she knew about and like the blues and the only blue singer she could think of was Bonnie Raitt.