Quote: “I can’t believe we made it (This is what we made, made)/ This is what we’re thankful for (This is what we thank, thank)/ I can’t believe we made it (This a different angle)/ Have you ever seen the crowd goin’ apeshit? Rah

Comment: These lyrics from “Apesh*t” by The Carters seemed to highlight the elements within Parker’s section on race studies within Post Colonial and Race Studies where the black community can critique and draw new forms of historical awareness to previously normalized renditions of whiteness. As from the chapter, “they honor the past, critique it and change it, and make it their own” (342). I felt that these lyrics are exemplified in the music video as the countless paintings and sculptures all depict this sense of whiteness, yet, at the same time, we know the historical truths of how art and culture were advanced by the work and exploitation of black people. For the Carter’s to bring awareness to that in the form of celebration, they can now take their realities of history and culture into the center of what was usually reserved for white society. 

Question: 

I might raise the question of how this could fit into the concept of double consciousness as presented in Parker’s chapter through the excerpt by W.E.B Du Bois on how “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (329). I thought that maybe this video and song point to the fact that it is usually this balance between cultures, either American or African American, and by the expression within the video, it might be allowing a blend of the two in both response and denial of those separations.