Everything but the Burden: What White People Are Taking from Black Culture

Everything but the Burden: What White People Are Taking from Black Culture. Ed. Greg Tate. New York: Harlem Moon/Broadway Books, 2003.

If the great problem of the twentieth century has been the problem of the color line, then a century later, the only color that seems to matter is green. In Everything but the Burden, Greg Tate and his team of writers take on various aspects of American popular culture, from Muhammad Ali to Pablo Picasso and imperialism, interracial sex, cornrows, pimpology, thugging, capitalistic exploitation, and racial transvestitism. As the title suggests, the underpinning thread of the text is that the only aspect of black culture that whites cannot appropriate is the burden of being black. This burden gives black culture its creative edge. This collection of essays, interviews, plays, and poetry embodies Ralph Ellison's idea that whatever the American is, he or she is always also somehow black.

Macroscopically, this book unpacks the...