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Former wunderkind hip-hop critic<\/a> and now English prof at Vassar<\/a>, Hua Hsu asks some great questions in his hot-off-the-press Atlantic<\/em> cover story, itself a question, “The End of White America?<\/a>” —<\/p>\n \nWhat will it mean to be white after \u201cwhiteness\u201d no longer defines the mainstream? Will anyone mourn the end of white America?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I especially appreciated — and anticipated — how hip-hop figures in the story he tells. This merits quoting at some length:<\/p>\n \nOver the past 30 years, few changes in American culture have been as significant as the rise of hip-hop. The genre has radically reshaped the way we listen to and consume music, first by opposing the pop mainstream and then by becoming it. From its constant sampling of past styles and eras\u2014old records, fashions, slang, anything\u2014to its mythologization of the self-made black antihero, hip-hop is more than a musical genre: it\u2019s a philosophy, a political statement, a way of approaching and remaking culture. It\u2019s a lingua franca not just among kids in America, but also among young people worldwide. And its economic impact extends beyond the music industry, to fashion, advertising, and film. (Consider the producer Russell Simmons\u2014the ur-Combs and a music, fashion, and television mogul\u2014or the rapper 50 Cent, who has parlayed his rags-to-riches story line into extracurricular successes that include a clothing line; book, video-game, and film deals; and a startlingly lucrative partnership with the makers of Vitamin Water.)<\/p>\n But hip-hop\u2019s deepest impact is symbolic. During popular music\u2019s rise in the 20th century, white artists and producers consistently \u201cmainstreamed\u201d African American innovations. Hip-hop\u2019s ascension has been different. Eminem notwithstanding, hip-hop never suffered through anything like an Elvis Presley moment, in which a white artist made a musical form safe for white America. This is no dig at Elvis\u2014the constrictive racial logic of the 1950s demanded the erasure of rock and roll\u2019s black roots, and if it hadn\u2019t been him, it would have been someone else. But hip-hop\u2014the sound of the post- civil-rights, post-soul generation\u2014found a global audience on its own terms.<\/p>\n Today, hip-hop\u2019s colonization of the global imagination, from fashion runways in Europe to dance competitions in Asia, is Disney-esque. This transformation has bred an unprecedented cultural confidence in its black originators. Whiteness is no longer a threat, or an ideal: it\u2019s kitsch to be appropriated, whether with gestures like Combs\u2019s \u201cwhite parties\u201d or the trickle-down epidemic of collared shirts and cuff links currently afflicting rappers. And an expansive multiculturalism is replacing the us-against-the-world bunker mentality that lent a thrilling edge to hip-hop\u2019s mid-1990s rise. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Coming back to Combs (preceding the passage above), Hua makes sense of Diddy’s embrace of WASPy-kitsch —<\/p>\n \n…consider Sean Combs, a hip-hop mogul and one of the most famous African Americans on the planet. Combs grew up during hip-hop\u2019s late-1970s rise, and he belongs to the first generation that could safely make a living working in the industry\u2014as a plucky young promoter and record-label intern in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and as a fashion designer, artist, and music executive worth hundreds of millions of dollars a brief decade later.<\/p>\n In the late 1990s, Combs made a fascinating gesture toward New York\u2019s high society. He announced his arrival into the circles of the rich and powerful not by crashing their parties, but by inviting them into his own spectacularly over-the-top world. Combs began to stage elaborate annual parties in the Hamptons, not far from where Fitzgerald\u2019s novel takes place. These \u201cwhite parties\u201d\u2014attendees are required to wear white\u2014quickly became legendary for their opulence (in 2004, Combs showcased a 1776 copy of the Declaration of Independence) as well as for the cultures-colliding quality of Hamptons elites paying their respects to someone so comfortably nouveau riche. Prospective business partners angled to get close to him and praised him as a guru of the lucrative \u201curban\u201d market, while grateful partygoers hailed him as a modern-day Gatsby.<\/p>\n \u201cHave I read The Great Gatsby?\u201d Combs said to a London newspaper in 2001. \u201cI am the Great Gatsby.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Moving backwards further, this brings us around to the place where the article begins, a reference made in Gatsby<\/em> to what Hua calls an “eerily serene” E20C white supremacist tract which claims, among other things, that<\/p>\n \u201cColored migration is a universal peril, menacing every part of the white world.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Apropos of that, here’s a visualization I stumbled upon yesterday (h\/t johnnn) —<\/p>\n