Black Voices, White Faces
Reaction to New Single Displays Institutional Racism in Music
By Christopher Patrick Nelson

The white British singer Amy Winehouse has a new single out called, “Rehab.” The song is Motown-style soul, and Winehouse sings it like a chunky 35-year-old black diva in 1967: They tried to make me go to rehab / I said, No, no, no. Or, to write it as she says it, “They trahda mek me goda rehab, ah sed Noe, noe, noe.” There's just one problem. I first heard it played on 97.3 KLLC, a station that plays 99% white artists. If she were actually black instead of just pretending to be, there is no way she would get played there. She would be quickly shuffled to the ghetto of 98.1 KISQ, where they play 99% black artists. This deliberately orchestrated dynamic is what is known as institutional racism.

When something is built into the basic construction of a society, that is an institution, and when that something is racist, this is institutional racism. I've also seen the video for “Rehab,” and it is really silly. Winehouse walks around with her long, straight hair combed down lip-synching while surrounded by all black musicians. As an artist myself, I wonder what she must think to herself as she affects the vocal mannerisms and word-choice – does she think that she's expressing herself? As a Brit, does she go around talking like a Civil Rights-era citizen of Mississippi? It is true that some white artists bring an original mix of influences and so create something new – like Fiona Apple. The real problem, however, is that as soon as white people begin to pattern their acts after the authentic black inventors of the form, the black inventors are no longer allowed access to mainstream broadcast. Program directors in charge of who gets played where put white rappers the Beastie Boys under modern rock next to the Cure. Forget hearing Run-DMC, who the Beastie Boys ripped off. Program directors put the white bluesman Stevie Ray Vaughn under moderate rock next to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on 97.7 KFOG. Forget hearing black Robert Cray – unless it's on that station's weekly blues ghetto.

Speaking of the blues, some people may defend the practice of not playing a lot of the first, fresh innovators in the form and say it's not commercially viable. My response to that argument is that blues is the foundation for heavy metal. There is no heavy metal without the “heavy blues” movement of the late ‘60's and early ‘70's. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, ZZ Top, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath all got their start covering black bluesmen. Metal was what happened when they wailed the vocals and distorted the guitars on blues songs. All of these bands (and those of the genre they started) still sell tons of records, so the commercial argument doesn't play very well.

Apart from the frustration a black artist must feel as a performer, there is a real money angle to this as well. Another Brit, Joss Stone can play dress-up to a James Brown-style beat and be on a mainstream (read: white) station like KLLC, but James Brown could not. That fact means a lot of exposure lost – even when he still toured and put out records, who knew about it? So, if his business is filling seats and selling records, and the institutions of radio deliberately cut him off from the means of doing so, his means of making a living will do poorly. He is cut off from this, not because of what he's playing – it's the same damn music -- but because of the color of his skin. And that is racism, institutional racism. They already call Amy Winehouse a diva in the reviews, but what about Angie Stone? Oh. Maybe you haven't heard of her.

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