Summary Of Race, Expressive Authenticity

Joel Rudinow is an author and instructor in philosophy and humanities at the Santa Rosa Junior College. In the article “Race, Ethnicity, Expressive Authenticity: Can White People Sing the Blues” he talks about the importance of authenticity of the white artists who sings the Blues. Is authenticity tied with race? Or is it just truthful emotions and experiences that make something authentic? Another theorist Amiri Baraka contradicts Rudinow’s theory, in fact, he thinks that a musician cannot perform authentic Blues without the black experience. He believes that only a particular race and racial experiences make something authentic. In the framework of stardom, expressive authenticity is more important than the collective rights. Although collective
He is a white artist in Hip Hop genre which is primarily considered to be owned by the black community. According to Biography, before he became a successful rapper he had an unstable childhood, abandoned by his father at birth, and his mother not being able to hold a job, they constantly moved around and he was bullied several times. Even after his career took off, after his divorce he started substance abuse, overdosed and nearly died, he went to rehab and gotten better. But, one year later he relapsed and was put in rehab, nevertheless he managed to come back to the music industry and perform. Eminem is portrayed as an authentic rapper, even though he is white and not part of the black community. There are three things that make an authentic rapper, the concern to stay true to oneself, the location/place, followed by their relationship to an original source (Armstrong 336). Armstrong argues that Eminem proves to be expressively authentic in these three ways. Eminem raps about himself and the things he has experienced, secondly, he was mainly brought up in the predominantly black neighborhood in Detroit according to Biography and finally, he is associated with Dr. Dre an African American who gave him the spotlight he