Soul Thieves - The Appropriation and Misrepresentation of African American Popular Culture (Hardcover)

This book looks at the misappropriation of African American popular culture through various genres. Hip-hop, the current most dominant African American popular culture creation, serves as the underpinning for the core areas of this book which delineates music, dance, television and film, sports, technology, fashion, sexuality, and religion. However, Soul Thieves is a historically inclusive documentation of the misappropriation of black popular culture, thus spanning other areas and genres besides the current craze. Perhaps the most daring and unique charge here is that most African American cultural creations have the inherent potential to be healing agents, and while many whites acknowledge these potential curative inclinations, they exploit the art for commercial purposes and to maintain and expand white ruling class hegemony over the black and white masses. However, Soul Thieves moves beyond victimization to analyze the roles that some African Americans play in the exploitation of African American popular culture.