This class we moved away from our previous discussions of computers and those sorts of technologies and started to focus more on the political and social implications of music. One of the main examples of this that we discussed were minstrel shows, and how they represented both blatant racism and a fascination for “black culture”. Humans have always been fascinated by what we deem as “boundary transgressing animals”, or people/creatures that do not fit into the categories that we as a society have come up with. One of the concepts that stuck with me this class is the idea that “pop culture is weird, politics is very segregated.” Which is something that I never realized, and I thought it was weird when it was first brought up, until I thought about it more and realized that in every example I can think of, political change has been brought about because of social change, not he other war around. Action happens in the political sphere because the citizens of the nation fight for it, I can’t think of any policy enacted that did not a first have a majority of the people behind it. Except maybe prohibition but we fixed that fairly quickly. The idea that the minstrel shows of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were anything but a racist caricature of black culture used to propagate negative stereotypes of the black community had never occurred to me. I mean they still are terrible racist caricatures, but the fact that in a historical sense, they illustrate a fascination with black people and black culture that I had never realized was in society at the time. That white people could make and pass laws limiting the basic human rights of black people, lynch them, and then the next day be entertained by a show claiming to portray black culture is fascinating in its hypocrisy to me.