posted on July 26, 2020 02:24 PM by
u/psychothumbs
68
u/titotal63 pointsat 1595774492.000000
Ah yes, the classic book where charles murray attempted to
“scientifically” measure the objectively greatest musicians
ever and only included one
black person. Obviously Lous Armstrong can’t live up to the highs of
minor 17th century lutists.
> Nor should Murray necessarily be called, as so many label him, a “pseudoscientist.” His writings are above-average in their statistical scrupulousness, and he uses no less logical rigor than many highly qualified social scientists do. The problem is far less in his use of the scientific method than in his normative values and conceptions of the good, which affect the uses to which he puts his science.
I'm generally enjoying the linked article but I have to take issue with this. *The Bell Curve* isn't taken seriously by the broader social science community, and it is very much because the underlying research is so comically bad. Yes, many in said community probably would be uncomfortable reckoning with Murray's conclusions even if they *were* rooted in solid science, but they unequivocally are *not*.
I'm sure many on this sub have already seen it, but for those of you who haven't, Shaun has a very well-researched [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo) that pretty thoroughly rips apart the allegedly sound statistics and methodology used by Murray and Herrnstein.
anyone that is into music theory knows that african americans basically innovated 2 of the most compositionally complex musical genre, 1 of which is directly influencing prolly more than 60% of contemporary music.
BUT, according to charles boomurray this doesn't matter
And *A Love Supreme* is excluded because everything after the 1950's is muh postmodernism. Imagine thinking that record isn't 'rooted in human experience, seriousness of purpose, and intellectual depth.'
Now I wonder how many of those musicians of the past century were actually just people who 'stole' Black peoples music. (Iirc Elvis was an example of that).
A lot of music only became acceptable after it was first whitewashed by being played by white people iirc.
~~yeah i'm pretty sure that's what a lot of minstrel shows were, repackaging black music and stories for a white audience, like this voyeuristic appreciation for black culture at a distance~~
missed the mark here, sorry
I meant stuff like Black jazz music only reaching the charts when it was covered by a white person first.
Minstrel shows are a totally different kind of evil (iirc there wasn't even black music in minstrel shows, it just was racism (but I know nothing of this))
> Minstrel shows are a totally different kind of evil (iirc there wasn't even black music in minstrel shows, it just was racism (but I know nothing of this))
The degree to which minstrelsy represented Black music is contentious and complicated, both because there were actually, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, quite a few Black minstrels (almost all of whom still wore blackface and still trafficked, to some degree, in racist stereotypes), and because practically *all* American music is Black in one sense or another—not just contemporary genres like rap, techno, and rock, not just jazz, but also pretty much the whole American folk-music tradition. Country music has Black origins. Square dance has Black origins! So even though the originators of minstrel music were all white, and drew influence from Irish and Scottish folk music, they also drew both from African music directly and from American folk music that had already been heavily influenced by Black musicians.
oh i knew what you were talking about, just goin off on a tangent.
and yeah from what i can skim in a couple seconds from [the wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minstrel_show), they claimed to have been inspired by black music, but the amount of actual influence is pretty heavily debated
Ow no, tangents are fine. (e: ah, irony, as I go on a 'harem->god damn white men' tangent)
And ... I should have checked the wikipedia article. Sitting behind the most powerful information dispensing machine in the world, and im using it to listen to music and look at pictures of cats.
I was reminded however of how our ideas of harems is totally messed up because our western popular culture got the idea of harems from white male explorers who were not allowed in (so just imagined shit) and who based their portrayals of harems on those ideas. (And that is how we get the idea of basically brothels for the kind, vs just a place were women/kids were only allowed (which it was in reality)).
So, as usual, it was the white western man who fucked it all up, it is embarrassing how often that is a theme.
hey no worries, i should've checked it too, and i would've seen that the "minstrel shows somewhat inspired by black culture" idea is pretty heavily disputed lol.
and wow, i didn't know that about ~~brothels~~ harems, that's pretty interesting/unfortunate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem Harems not brothels, the western idea of the harem is just wrong.
"Harem (Arabic: حريم ḥarīm, "a sacred inviolable place; harem; female members of the family"),[1][2] properly refers to domestic spaces that are reserved for the women of the house in a Muslim family.[3][4][5] This private space has been traditionally understood as serving the purposes of maintaining the modesty, privilege, and protection of women. A harem may house a man's wife — or wives and concubines, as in royal harems of the past — their pre-pubescent male children, unmarried daughters, female domestic workers, and other unmarried female relatives." this + orientalism became 'rich persons brothel where belly dancers were kept'
E: and while im on my weird 'god damn western white people and their bullshit' tangents, here is something about [bees](https://twitter.com/NomeDaBarbarian/status/1287249750899662849) tl:dr; it took western science 4500 years longer than the rest of the world to figure out that the queen bee is in fact female, patriarchy assumed kingship.
TBH the history of the Ottoman rulers is fascinating, with its mixture of looking-for-favors, infighting, rule by Eunuchs, brother killing, actually well-educated women, the power struggles between the Chief Eunuch and the Sultan's mother during the Sultanate of Women, house arrest for potential claimants to make sure they can't grab power .... you got me, I like medieval history of power, and the Ottomans had a rather unique system.
> I was reminded however of how our ideas of harems is totally messed up because our western popular culture got the idea of harems from white male explorers who were not allowed in (so just imagined shit) and who based their portrayals of harems on those ideas. (And that is how we get the idea of basically brothels for the kind, vs just a place were women/kids were only allowed (which it was in reality)).
ARE WE SURPRISED
I know a bit about minstrel shows, and what /u/soyweiser is saying is essentially correct: a minstrel show - and they appeared on television right up to the 70s - was essentially a caricature of black people and black music presented for the entertainment of white viewers precisely for being a caricature
It’s slightly complicated by the fact that in supposed *intention* it was a picture of multi-cultural America - except for the fact that it was performed by white people blacking up and pretending to be black Americans on stage
> It’s slightly complicated by the fact that in supposed intention it was a picture of multi-cultural America
A picture of multi-cultural America whose purpose was to whitewash the US's racism and portray the victims of racial apartheid as happy about their circumstances.
gotcha, i knew they were definitely derogatory caricatures, i was just thinking there was an inkling of actual inspiration from black culture there. guess not.
sorry for spreading misinformation
[John Jenkins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jenkins_(composer)), [Nicholas Launier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Lanier), [Matthew locke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Locke_(composer)), are all minor 17th century musicians featured in the list. Which is 3 times as many as the number of black people.
Charles Murray: *doesn’t use any encyclopedias for Africa – “Hmm,
looks like there is no Accomplishment whatsoever in Africa, must be my
superior cranial capacity.”
Not the most remarkable thing about this excerpt, but what is
“female-headedness”??
Most blacks came from a highly collective society in Africa, then
lived under slavery and Jim Crow in the South. Those structures kept
disorder at a low level. In that era, black levels of crime and
female-headedness were not much higher than among
whites.
> Not the most remarkable thing about this excerpt, but what is "female-headedness"??
I think they are referring to female-headed families. That would be consistent with the broader political project that Charles Murray is a part of that tries to find alternative conservative explanations for higher crime rates among US black people. Rather than talking about housing segregation and poor schooling or whatever, they talk about how so many US black kids grow up in single parent families.
Ah yes, the classic book where charles murray attempted to “scientifically” measure the objectively greatest musicians ever and only included one black person. Obviously Lous Armstrong can’t live up to the highs of minor 17th century lutists.
Charles Murray: *doesn’t use any encyclopedias for Africa – “Hmm, looks like there is no Accomplishment whatsoever in Africa, must be my superior cranial capacity.”
File next to “population density maps” under “graphs of population over time.”
Not the most remarkable thing about this excerpt, but what is “female-headedness”??
Taleb, of all people, pointed out that Murray’s definition of western is fairly, uh, creative