One Love (multicultural marketing, pt. 2)

We also need to check the role social, economic, and political inequities play in multiculturalism. Over the years I’ve kicked it with many an athlete, dealer, club dancer, artist, etc. Most all of them had one thing in common: They believed that their current paths were their only way out. They believed that their bodies, their athleticism, their criminal enterprises, etc. were their only means of survival and escaping their environment.

Conversely, I’ve met thousands of mainstream folk who took more traditional routes. They were doctors, politicians, lawyers, factory workers, businesspeople, waitresses, etc. For all their varied struggles, the idea of taking seedier routes to survival never seemed “necessary” to them. Regardless of their socio-economic backgrounds they all had a sense of hope that comes being accepted as “American” without the added cultural barriers most minorities face in order to be accepted as such.

So much of culture gets exploited because the people of those cultures believe that doing so is their best, if not only, means of survival/success and/or acceptance. They sell their artistry, not out of love or opportunity but out of survival. They sell their expressions because traditional job opportunities aren’t available to them. They allow their histories and identities to be manipulated because it seems to be only way they’ll be accepted by the larger society. When people believe their options are limited, they will consider the inconsiderable. They will put a price on the priceless and sell the unsellable. They will sell their bodies. They will sell drugs. They will sell their cultures. They will sell their souls.

Culture in its purest form is a combination of birthright, heritage, and communal expression. On its own, culture is hustle-free; it’s in the blood of people and the people are in it and together they decide where it goes and what forms it takes. So in order for a culture to become a hustle it must be controlled and commoditized. And for that to happen the culture must either be extracted from the people or the people must marginalized until they are no longer accepted as the keepers/authorities of the culture. As those things occur, that culture can be co-opted and consumed. And that is what modern American multiculturalism is—cultures being sliced and diced and packaged into marketable, controllable commodities for mass consumption—at a healthy profit for industry.

True multiculturalism is art and we don’t paint pictures anymore; we just trace co-opted templates and fill in color-by-numbers imagery. And as long as America accepts the construct that culture doesn’t exist until America discovers it or defines it and culture has no value until America puts a price on it, the Culture as Product hustle, which modern American multiculturalism is a byproduct of, will continue.

A race of people is like an individual man; until it uses its own talent,
takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture,
affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.
—Malcolm X