When I checked the schedule to see what the topic of this class was going to be about, I thought it would just be a generic history lesson of what types of genres of music were popular and being developed in American History. So it goes without saying that I was surprised by the contents of the class lecture when we finally got started, mainly on the discussion of race and racism in America.

Now I’m not naive enough to think that racism doesn’t play a huge part in American history, or that racism is a problem that has gone away in the present time. But the class opened with an interesting parallel to political culture in America to the popular culture in America. American entertainment is actually racially integrated in weird ways, which is interesting considering how political aspects of America are so segregated to this day. One aspect of cultural integration that we discussed was the Minstrel Shows that were popular in the 19th to early 20th centuries.

What surprised me at first was how famous people such as Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain enjoyed Minstrel Shows, despite both being seen as prominent figures of anti-racism. Minstrel Shows are basically shows about white people performing in blackface, using black culture as a demeaning form of racism.

Now I dismissed this as a clear cut example of nonsense like white supremacy, but Professor O’Malley made interesting arguments that Minstrel Shows could be seen as a sort of forbidden show for white people. It was a way to see black culture for white people at the time, and to use it in their own form of entertainment.

While I could see some of his arguments, I feel that Minstrel shows are just examples of racism in America from white people towards black people. The way black people were oppressed to the point where white people needed to take their culture and use it for entertainment is quite disgusting to me. The posters that we saw advertising Minstrel Shows were also quite uncomfortable, with the odd expressions being off-putting to the point that I cannot imagine how they didn’t drive people away from Minstrel Shows.

We also listened to the music of the time, including the Yellow Rose of Texas. Aside from one song that sounded sad to us but was apparently supposed to be hilarious at the time it was written, songs like the Yellow Rose of Texas were used to illuminate how Minstrel songs kind of turned to examples of country music. Apparently there were many songs from Minstrel shows that were used by Confederate soldiers, and then turned into southern state songs, like how the Yellow Rose of Texas is used as a state song for the State of Texas. While the racist origins of country music and even some instruments (like banjos, which are seen as white people instruments despite coming from Africa) didn’t really surprise me, but it’s interesting to see how music that we find harmless has quite the disturbing history behind them.

This class was an interesting one, though the subject of racism in America is one that I struggle to truly understand, considering how I’m a white man who’s pretty well-off. I look forward to hearing about how aspects of popular culture in America change American politics, such as how blackface was actually used to separate people like the Irish and Italians from black people, making the “white” distinction much more wide spread. It’s little facts like this that catch my interest, and make me wonder what’s coming next.