booktv, television for serious readers. >> good morning. welcome to the 36th annual

south board printers row lit fest. please help me give a special thank you to our sponsors. [applause] and before we begin to ask that you silence your cell phones and turn off your camera flashes. please help me welcome lauren michele jackson, the author of "white negroes: when cornrows were in vogue...and other thoughts on cultural appropriation." and natalie moore from wbz, and it will be in conversation -- thank you so much. >> thank you. >> it's so wonderful to meet you, lawrenceburg you as well. >> i read your book last year and i posted it on instagram and people are always like oh, my god, i love the title. it really draws them in. if you could explain the origins

and what you are referencing in your title first. >> yeah. so the title was, one of those things where we start to think about a book and what it's going to become and what is going to look like, a lot of things as you know change, right, between your sort of original thought process and actual finished product. the title is one of the things at least the main portion of the title white negroes is one of the things that did not change at all like from the very beginning when i was writing this book, like this book has to be called "white negroes." the thing that is being referenced there is an essay from 57, 59 pebbly by public by norman mailer called the white negro that was published in the dissent, and it's a this really long like 9000 word like very winding essay that's like trying to think about hipster culture

of the '50s and thinking about sort of postwar youth affect and disaffection and all these things and try to think about why all these affluent white kids alike going to the hood basically slumming it, getting into jazz and getting into all these very black artistic forums and styles of dress. i want to sort of referenced in some ways because it's such come as you mention very catching title, spatially on the front cover of a book but it also really did come part of the book is trying to think seriously about what is so attractive about black expression. >> and the cornrows window. the subtitle is just as arresting as the white negro

part. >> yeah. and it's like sort of like a double entente, like literally en vogue magazine but also thinking about white people who will sort of pickup black hairstyles and then shut them down because they're not cool anymore. >> right. people listening might be surprised about this norman mailer writing this in the 1950s because it's so applicable. you could think about the pop culture today and white youth, particularly white suburban youth who pick up on these adaptations and style and culture. >> right. even the '20s. it's a pretty repetitive, you know, sort of trend, cycle also part of what i wanted to do with this book was to think about is there something specific about the new millennium?

this book is focused in post 2000 culture. right is a something specific about the internet for the way pop culture works now? that may be changes or in flex that trend in any way. >> the first line in your book says appropriation gets a bad rap. why does it get a bad rap? >> i think in some ways appropriation has the definition of the word sort of in our popular lexicon now is really seriously associated with a certain form of appropriation. appropriation that exhibits some sort of power differential between the people who create things and then the people who get credit for creating things. or there's a sort of like racial disparity. one of the things i was thinking

that is appropriation is really so much broader than that. you think about even within just what we would call black music. it evolves to the sort of appropriation of older forms, hip-hop evolves out of appropriation of disco records, and r&b and funk and that's how it's been able to change and incorporate new forms with in it. i didn't want a reader to get the impression that i think all appropriation is awful and bad. that's how artistic innovation happened. the reason why they get such a bad rap is that we do have a cycle of people's labor a sort of creative insights being appropriated without attribution. that is a problem. it is power not necessarily the sort of active repurchasing. >> does everyone appropriate?

even if they're not making money off of it. >> yeah. i mean, that's another thing. it's not, we can't silo, we're not siloed off from each other. the thing about appropriation is it truly does happen without you necessarily noticing it were thinking about it. think about the way language changes and buzzwords and things like that. a lot of times you don't know the point when a new sort of vocabulary word or new slang term entered your speech took is kind of the lazily you realize i just heard all the time. a beach or frustrated you can get or you saw on tv show like the actual transparent kind of just come that's that the think we're cognizant of. the thing that draws our attention is when it feels mismanaged or feels like the fit isn't right, right? like my miley cyrus working on

the stage of the viennese. that rings alarm bells because it doesn't look quite right. other forms, they've been quite seamless. >> i think about do i -- i'm not opening a restaurant. i want to talk about food but at home i took a lot of -- cook a lot of indian food and a drive any indian heritage. i like to make korean short ribs and and i thought wow, my palate, my kitchen is very global. but i think that's a good thing that even though it is appropriation i'm taken from other culture but i'm not claiming it as my own. >> right. i think it's the claiming of it and it's really like capital and bald as with so many things that it does get, then it does get fraught. when i finished reading your book and when i been talking about it, really i think your

critique is not, it's about appropriation but it's really a critique of capitalism and power. >> absolutely. as i said, capitalism is really just like it distorts and mangles like a lot of things that would otherwise be like really great and good, like relationships between people, between creators, between artists come between cultures, truly once the money gets involved it just becomes something just like really off and strange and exploitative. it's consumer culture. the question i think you're asking people to think about in this book is who's holding the power and who is profiting from it. >> absolutely.

when you are either an artist or someone who is involved in creating art in part, the culinary arts, you know, these are things that should be thought about that a don't think art taught about as vigorous as they should be or could be other people are in power, i think, really crucial decisions. >> one of my favorite examples will always be the pregnant kardashian jenner clan. obviously white but relished in being black adjacent. the tanning, ellipse, the cornrows. what do you make of their desire for black culture and black aesthetic? >> the kardashian, they are so very interesting to me, particularly the like actual kardashians.

we use kardashian for shorthand for the kardashian jenners rebutted to think like him herself is particularly interesting just because she has, she is armenian american so she like has this ethnic heritage that in some ways puts her in like a sort of ambivalent relationship to whiteness, if we think about the sort of 20th century history of how european ethnic groups be, white. or white-ish. and so she sort of jesus that sort of exoticism to her benefit when it suits her. so i feel like that is sort of what allows her to sort of seamlessly slip into sort of black styles and black cultural forms. they have like a family has like a very interesting history with

romantic coupling with black men and i think like the most, i don't know, the most absurd thing at all about all is the majority of them are now like, they are like mom's with black children. it's such an interesting way to think about the evolution of that family. so i think part of it is for her is just being able to slip in and out of whiteness when it suits her. when she speaking with taylor swift, suddenly people are talking about kim if she is, in fact, a woman of color. she she's getting all those signifiers. she's angry. she claps back. she blacks back, , as with the media portrays it. but when it comes to her and her sisters feuding with someone like black china who was a black woman who is perceived as a certain kind of way, you know, then all of a sudden it is kim

is sort of fragile white party, fragile white women in the situation. so i think in some ways kim kardashian is just truly just like, just like a human example for the way race kind of, racial signification mutates and is read differently in different contexts in america at least. >> and being from chicago i just read it so differently because ethnic means white in chicago. i have never read her as ethnically ambiguous. it's like whiteness has an identity you. it's like you're polish, your irish, armenian. you are literally caucasian. >> from the caucus. when people like she's a woman --.com should literally caucasian. >> tell me someone black you can

make a sex tape and profit the way that she has and her family. i find those -- but she's a cool white girl so she gets like this whole cookout past sort of thing that we see. >> ic white. >> yes. >> let's talk about some of the other pop-culture figures and institutions that you have chapters on in the book. >> yeah, so the book is quite an overlay. i try to dig down into certain element come certain moments that are of interest to me. the first chapter is about pop music. i talk a lot about christine a regular who had an interesting, it's her like dirty era in which

she was wearing box sprays and fancy knots and other sorts of like traditionally black hairstyles. .. >> she has an ecuadoran father and people are will christina aguilera and people are

attracted to exoticism about her even though she's the whitest girl from the suburbs of philly. she also sings and talks about importance of growing up and listening to r&b records with her grandmother. as she's moving out of this disney phase. she's moving on. we have seen this before. we seen with artists like madonna and even britney at the time was doing a similar thing. working with the nick tunes for her third album, i believe. justin timberlake is the same way. nsync makes r&b, just wanted to see what was happening there.

other parts of the book talk about paula dean which has fallen out of culture register. >> that was actually my favorite character. >> she was such a thing. we never talk about paula dean anymore. she's quote, unquote canceled and she canceled herself and she's now very rich and probably out in the country side somewhere. i guess good for her. paula dean is my way talking about food culture, the culinary scene. a few chapters on internet culture. actually the book was going to be about the internet. whenever i saw the proposal, i

think it was much more we are attuned to now. it's so strange and so weird but, like, you know, the anonymity of online culture allows for so much racial weirdness and mascaraing and, you know, vernacular. food, politics is -- art which is running wild over there. let's go back to paula dean.

you say you don't know why people loved her at the time and new that there's distance, why do you think she was so up heeling. >> she was literally comfort good. a person that was like comforting for like myself from the midwest, she was kind of like a benevolent image of the south that people were comfortable with. we don't like, con fed flags and the kkk. sweet-old lady helping you how to make mac and cheese. and i think also just her broadly for america, sort of the same thing and even for southerners, right, you can think about just the way that

there's so many maligned sort of ways of eating in the south and i think paula dean is also kind of a representation of something that, you know, everyone could agree on a lot of ways and it helps that she was white and she was very good at what she did. she was very charismatic and familiar with sort of her story, like you don't know that she was taking all of herpes pees from like her black chef. you didn't know that -- until the deposition comes out that she was trying to plant a plantation theme. these are all things that should not have taken the culture by surprise but like in some ways i think that people very much want it to be sort of shock and awe about her and i think what is actually the most probably

interesting part about the paula dean story is that she wasn't like vanished for the racism. she was vanished because it came out that she had diabetes and so america, this become reason to say that all the people who criticized her, recipes before would see she makes unhealthy food and look at her, she's unhealthy and she started diabetes medication. so this is all of the reasons, anthony bourdain criticized her and these were reasons to push paula from memory and culture. not her admitting to saying the n word sometimes. >> of course. it's how she said. have you said the n word and she said, of course.

duh. [laughter] >> why wouldn't i? when someone is caught using the n word or misused the n word, they act like that word disappears or something -- people always taken by surprise. surely it was the one time. no, they said it like, yeah. they know it. you use paula dean to talk about other culinary arts and you write how culinary geniuses died poor. i was out to dinner recently with a friend and she had never seen bone marrow on the menu and her family is from the caribbean. this is like poor people's food. we really just ordered bone marrow and i'm like, yeah, it's a thing. there's lots of different

hipsters making -- i have a lot to say about fried chicken but i won't go there. i will not eat fried chicken that was not prepared on the south side because it does not taste -- i would be open, you all are really paying on this money for this unseasoned fried chicken. the hipsters making korean food. >> elevated mexican cuisine, elevated whatever. you don't see elevated italian, elevated french because we've already sort of culturally determined that these types of ethnic cuisines are worth money, lake worth paying for, worth $26 at least for like a plate of

pasta at your regular italian restaurant. if you pay more than $4 for a taco, you're going to riot unless like, again, the chef is like doing elevated mexican food, right? you know, these are things that are not, you know, random, are not arbitrary, right. it's sort of embed into our culture understanding of what food is valuable or when it becomes valuable depending on who is cooking it or whose name is attached to it. >> how do you want people to reconcile their relationship to appropriation? >> i think just like us thinking about it is like a really good start. i think it's just -- i would like us to kind of eliminate our food knee-jerk reaction that happens whenever we hear that word and, yes, part of it is because people are afraid, you

know, you admit to it and then you're going to be like splashed on somebody's blog or whatever if someone is appropriating and blah, blah. but i also think it's the understanding if you create something, make something, sell something like none of that is happening in a vacuum or out of context or like you, you know, maybe entering something but there's a whole history that proceeds you that you sort of participating in even if you're not cognizant of it. my thing is always about context. i think that people should think about the context in which they move and how they impact spaces and how they're allowing spaces to impact them. that's all very vague. i don't have, you know, a prescription. 10-point plan. [laughter] >> let's just even take how

would it affect let's say fashion magazines or museums or whoever owns tiktok. i mean, i think like it would -- all of these things fully collapse. we had to be accountable for attribution and people would not have museums. i don't know. we could reimagine, you know, museums were invented and colonials, inventions, of course. but like also i think about the way that, like, you know, artists, when they have a mind too, they do credit their sources. they do, you know, say who their amash is or critics when they're reading a piece of art, they say this painting is indebted so and

so painter from 20 years ago. when we want to give credit, we do, so in some ways it's like we actually don't have to reinvent the wheel here. i think it's actually a different way of seeing, right, where, you know, fashion magazines see the insights of sort of designers that they seem worth mention. they won't, they won't see the insides of the street style it's being looked at or choose not to see it and choose not the cite it. and so, you know, own one hand, yes, a problem of like. >> it's not as if no one gives create for forbearers or anything like that.

it's from the scene, i think in citation. >> what's making you cringe since the book has come out? >> i don't know -- [laughter] >> that's a good question. in terms of appropriation -- >> yeah. >> i wrote the book and i was like, okay, i said my peace and so i'm kind of like not as on the finger of the pulse of what's going on. i mean, i think -- i don't know. i think music is such a -- like i think, you know, miley, there's a moment where it seemed like she was going to go back into doing rap or something like that. i just like remember she had an instagram story or something, like saying something, do y'all miss this version of myself or

whatever and everyone is like -- >> no. >> here we go. no. i just think like racial conversations are really -- i think they are really weird right now. i think people are in some ways, by people i mean sort of like major creators, hyper-aware of how easy it is to -- how easy it is to catch the uniter for not sort of properly atoning for, i don't know, whatever sort of appropriate exist in their work. we just have to say that appropriation isn't happening. i think that people are are just trying to be very pr about the way that they talk about things. so you will see like producers say lake, so influenced by, you

know, the rock legends that black people create. you know, it's very showy i think right now which is not the same thing as, you know, actually sort of improving our literacy on the thing so, yeah, but i don't -- >> it's a pop culture thing that i'm cringing at. i don't know if i have enough energy to cringe. >> there's so many things to cringe. >> sort of the major level. >> we have time for about ten minutes of questions, so if you want to come to the mic and ask anything. >> i can ask about another question while you're thinking of your own question and walking on the stage. toward the end you write that the appropriation of black

language can't be stopped unless we leave for mars and don't come back and surely exist in ethical model and i know that you're not going to be prescriptive, acknowledgment is just one piece, i think, that you're saying there has to be, you know, i think about the chef who died with nothing and they were geniuses in the kitchen. >> yeah, i mean, with language it seems so different and that's the sort of one of the portions of the book that is dealing not so much with chefs who are getting a lot of money and musicians or producers making a lot of money but really everyday people who are sort of moving about online. one of the things that they did land on, you know, we have -- you have list every year that

would scrape through, you know, the terms of the day or just sort of buzz words of the year and was like canceled out or let's not use this anymore and like you notice throughout the years especially with the sort of social media that every year would be something like -- i don't even know. lit. i can't remember anymore. they fall out of fashion so quickly. it's always like the somewhere. mass culture, white flash, will find new term and sometimes not use it correctly but just like wear the hell out of it and we are done with it. look, this word has been circulating just fine for last

the past -- for like 5 years and hasn't sort of wore out its welcome and then, you know, everyone now is putting it on t-shirts and at etsy products and it's too much. basic is another one. and so, yeah, again, introduction of consumer culture, right. you almost think that if this had stayed within the realm of speech, even the appropriation of it wouldn't necessarily be so awful but it's just lake, yeah, okay. well, that's done. >> any questions out there?

i think like, i don't know. maybe halfway doing it well. i don't know. >> one thing speaking of white rappers that made me cringe was this very -- i don't know his name, tiktok person. very clean-cut, khaki white guy wrapping about things that he says he doesn't know about and stereotypes. i don't rap about guns or drugs. >> i did see that. >> white people please stop doing this. >> it's lake you're doing bad,

seems like you're doing bad -- >> yeah. >> i'm not going to spend $400 in a t-shirt and go crazy. as soon as you said white man -- [laughter] chad hank who i have completely forgot about. >> and it's lake did we have a white person, maybe. it's so -- i think he kind of went viral for doing like a bad jamaican accent because he thought it was funny. it was the white boy summer video, but he is just like -- now he's like, you know,

antivaxxer or something. a lot of -- a lot of distance between, you know, the collin hanks and the chad hanks and i think, you know, collin hanks acts like he doesn't know his own brother, so and it's clear why. [laughter] >> we have one question. you can take us out. >> are you able to talk about jazz as a field for appropriation or assimilation or integration? how do you see those issues playing out in that? >> yeah. so i'm not a jazz -- the book itself kind of start in the early 2000's because i think there's actually a lot of, you know, sort of really wonderful work thinking about evolution

and the 20th century. he's thinking about the white use appropriation and interest in jazz culture and hipster culture. >> a lot of harlem renaissance literature that's kind of thinking about this. one of my favorite novels is called black no more by george skyler who was an author and actually really kind of critical about the idea of like he was critical of the idea of there being distinct black culture, but sort of in this novel sort of begins in this mixed-race

jazz setting and one of the characters -- she's like, no. and they're like, oh, they are here bowknot going to go all the way. it was a science fiction novel because it's about the procedure where you -- all the black people turn white. but also, there's a novel in heaven which has like this glossary and all of these, but has all of these jazz terms that you're supposed to -- i don't know if you're supposed to reference them as you're reading the novel but it's like, honky is a white person. but it's all in that setting and it's very inflict bid jeff and really thinking about the sort of cross racial of that.

but that is just to say that i'm not a jazz expert but there's so much interesting stuff there that i think resonates with the way that hip-hop works today. >> great, well, thank you so much, lauren, for being here and thank you for your work. >> oh, thank you for being in conversation with me.

places, memoir of struggle with lyme disease. >> new york times columnist, author