Racism in Radio

[Libra]

Though I dread even making this thread as much as the direction it could go in, something's gotta be done to give the discussion a place and to take it out of the "Pretty Hurts" thread so's Bey can get back in her own thread.

So, there's been accusations of Pop radio being racist, of Urban radio being racist against white artists, and talk of "white privilege" in general.

Simply put: Is there racism in radio? If so, to what extent?

[Lahey's Lucky Star]

How exactly is radio racist when the past three #1's were by black people and another one featured one?

[🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾]

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

by Peggy McIntosh

Through work to bring materials from women's studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to women's statues, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women's disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended.

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of while privilege that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.

Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in women's studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, "having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?"

After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are just seen as oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.

My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow "them" to be more like "us."

Daily effects of white privilege

I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and time of work cannot count on most of these conditions.

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.

3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race.

12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

16. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others' attitudes toward their race.

17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.

18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.

19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race.

25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.

26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's magazines featuring people of my race.

27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.

28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.

29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.

30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.

31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.

32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.

33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.

34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.

35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.

36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.

37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.

38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.

39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.

40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.

43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem.

44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my race.

45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.

46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin.

47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.

48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.

49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.

50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.

Elusive and fugitive

I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one's life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.

In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience that I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive.

I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a patter of assumptions that were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turn, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.

In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of color.

For this reason, the word "privilege" now seems to me misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work systematically to over empower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one's race or sex.

Earned strength, unearned power

I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power conferred privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.

We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages, which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantage, which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. This paper results from a process of coming to see that some of the power that I originally say as attendant on being a human being in the United States consisted in unearned advantage and conferred dominance.

I have met very few men who truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance, and, if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see "whiteness" as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.

Difficulties and angers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantages associated with them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage that rest more on social class, economic class, race, religion, sex, and ethnic identity that on other factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the members of the Combahee River Collective pointed out in their "Black Feminist Statement" of 1977.

One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms, which we can see, and embedded forms, which as a member of the dominant groups one is taught not to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.

Disapproving of the system won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitude. But a "white" skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate but cannot end, these problems.

To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these subject taboo. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.

Although systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and, I imagine, for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.

---

Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working Paper 189. "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies" (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $10.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181 The working paper contains a longer list of privileges.

This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent School.

Source

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

tl;dr (for now)

On one hand, I don't think radio, or any mainstream media or entertainment is outwardly explicitly racist (ok. I'm sure there are a few exceptions but I think in a lot of cases, they are rightfully called out). I think as the title of the article Disco posted implied, there is a white privilege when it comes to movies and music. I think radio stations are responding to what the audiences call for and right now, there isn't particularly a call to action for the type of mainstreaming non-white artists need in order to be deemed on equal footing by audiences and, as such, by stations.

The way I perceive it is this: music (and movies, and entertainment in general) is still viewed by classifications and genres. And as much as the sound of the music determines it's genre, so does its look and image. Hell, women are still classified as a different genre in a lot of ways from men when it comes to entertainment. If a movie features predominantly strong female roles, it's classified as a film geared toward female audiences. The same goes with female-fronted music. It's often not perceived as part of the "mainstream" but as a sub-genre. The same goes for music by out-artists. They're perceived as targeting LGBT audiences first. Black artists are perceived as targeting black audiences. Asian for asian. Latino for latino, etc. So does the imply that white artists target white audiences? What's the percentage of white audiences compared to others? Does "mainstream" = "white audience"? I think there's still a lot of division between who artists are perceived to target based on the demographic they fit in. This also takes into account factors such as age and in some cases, even perceived class.
So going back to the "white privilege" idea. I think young, straight, white, male artists typically aren't limited by their demographic and have the pick of the litter over how they can be marketed. As you add additional classifications for how an artist is viewed (gender, colour, orientation, age, etc, etc), you're adding specifications that can limit or restrict how that person is marketed, and different classifications hold different weight. So race may be more restrictive than gender, for example, but age could be more restrictive than race, and so on.

So I guess to make a long post slightly longer, as I said in another topic, I think it's an issue of it being a larger thing. Whether it should be called societal "racism" or whatever, I don't know. I think varying degrees of privilege is at work here that make it challenging for perceived 'minorities' to have it as easy as others.

[Linnethia Monique]

Are we getting into this discussion again?

[Fat Ass Kelly Price]

May 20, 2014 16:37:17 GMT -5 Lahey's Lucky Star said:

How exactly is radio racist when the past three #1's were by black people and another one featured one?

This is this topic's equivalent of: "I can't be racist. My best friend is black!"

Anyway, can we talk about the lack of Asian stars in the American music industry (hell, in movies and television too)?

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

May 20, 2014 18:33:35 GMT -5 Linnethia Monique said:

Are we getting into this discussion again?

Only if you choose to, I guess?

[Deleted]

This topic is just going to go around in circles forever until people understand that there is deeply rooted racial biases towards white people and against people of color in every avenue of American society and arguably Western societies as a whole. Radio is not magically exempt from this and to act like it is just makes you look woefully naive and ignorant.

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

May 20, 2014 19:40:09 GMT -5 @soblu said:

This topic is just going to go around in circles forever until people understand that there is deeply rooted racial biases towards white people and against people of color in every avenue of American society and arguably Western societies as a whole. Radio is not magically exempt from this and to act like it is just makes you look woefully naive and ignorant.

Where does the conversation go from there?

[Deleted]

I don't see a problem with the discussion so long as we don't make this a discussion about whether or not we should have the discussion.

[Oprah]

May 20, 2014 16:37:17 GMT -5 Lahey's Lucky Star said:

How exactly is radio racist when the past three #1's were by black people and another one featured one?

Yeah, the fact that black people get #1's sometimes totally means there's no institutional racism at play at pop radio. Much like how racism is dead in the US now that Obama's president.

[14887fan]

It's not easy to say that Pop radio is definitely racist, but it seems to be a pretty logical thing to infer. Relating this to a field of my own personal knowledge, Country radio is massively, disgustingly sexist, and even though the factual evidence isn't there to prove it exactly, it's still an accurate inference.

May 18, 2014 22:16:08 GMT -5 Oprah said:

In all seriousness, Beyonce is currently just about the biggest star in the world and has a ridiculous amount of hype surrounding her personal and professional life. Her new music has done incredibly well commercially and critically and doesn't exactly buck from what's considered mainstream these days. It doesn't take a genius to tell that the fact that pop radio still won't touch her even though just about every factor is lined up right indicates that somethin' in the buttermilk ain't clean.

This.

[H-Town Vicious]

Most of the time black artists have to make songs that are not within their genre to get play at pop radio. It's sad. Pop stands for popular and shouls represent all genres. One station here in Atlanta proudly proclaims in their slogan that they play all the hits without the rap. It's hilarious because the majority of people who buy hip hop albums are suburban white kids.

[no apologist]

yes there is because a lot of white artists are taking over urban music and getting credit for it. Just look at these white washed awards shows with WHITE artists winning black categories. When a black person sings an urban song, no one cares, but when Katy does it's hot and goes to #1.

[no apologist]

As for Beyonce, I'm not really shocked POP is shunning her. Beyonce has been getting away with mediocrity since the beginning of her solo career. One of her biggest hits (Crazy In Love) is one of the most overrated songs of all time. Songs in the style of Pretty Hurts haven't been popular on Billboard and POP radio in like forever, so why should they play it? Because it's Beyonce? LOL

[Glove Slap]

Racism permeates every aspect of the industry. Not in the same fine clear lines that it did in the past, but it's incredibly stupid to just assume that it does not. Radio is no exception.

That said though...

May 18, 2014 22:16:08 GMT -5 Oprah said:

In all seriousness, Beyonce is currently just about the biggest star in the world and has a ridiculous amount of hype surrounding her personal and professional life. Her new music has done incredibly well commercially and critically and doesn't exactly buck from what's considered mainstream these days. It doesn't take a genius to tell that the fact that pop radio still won't touch her even though just about every factor is lined up right indicates that somethin' in the buttermilk ain't clean.

^this is not a good argument. Just because an album sells well and is well received by critics does not mean that the people that listen to CHR will not react negatively to the material and change the station. And saying that pop radio "won't touch her" is a giant stretch after it placed 2 songs in the top 20, even with one like DIL.

[B-Boy]

May 21, 2014 2:26:07 GMT -5 H-Town Vicious said:

Most of the time black artists have to make songs that are not within their genre to get play at pop radio. It's sad. Pop stands for popular and shouls represent all genres. One station here in Atlanta proudly proclaims in their slogan that they play all the hits without the rap. It's hilarious because the majority of people who buy hip hop albums are suburban white kids.

You must be referring to Star 94. That station leans Adult Contemporary and have been since the 1990s. I would like to believe the station's aversion to rap was a response to CHR stations adding rap songs to their playlists. Not all CHRs are there for Hip Hop music.

[Oprah]

May 21, 2014 8:04:11 GMT -5 Glove Slap said:

May 18, 2014 22:16:08 GMT -5 Oprah said:

In all seriousness, Beyonce is currently just about the biggest star in the world and has a ridiculous amount of hype surrounding her personal and professional life. Her new music has done incredibly well commercially and critically and doesn't exactly buck from what's considered mainstream these days. It doesn't take a genius to tell that the fact that pop radio still won't touch her even though just about every factor is lined up right indicates that somethin' in the buttermilk ain't clean.

^this is not a good argument. Just because an album sells well and is well received by critics does not mean that the people that listen to CHR will not react negatively to the material and change the station. And saying that pop radio "won't touch her" is a giant stretch after it placed 2 songs in the top 20, even with one like DIL.

I could see that if we were talking about a fabulously successful smooth jazz album, but we aren't. The singles serviced from Beyonce are all perfectly mainstream and could easily fit into what is big on CHR currently. Of course it's possible listeners won't like the music anyway - I don't know what the call-out scores for this string of singles has been, maybe they were awful - but the commercial and critical success of the album would indicate otherwise.

[Deleted]

The call out scores for "XO" and "Drunk In Love" at CHR/Pop were not good. "Drunk In Love" had fairly high negative scores.

[ListenToItTwice]

There is NO SUCH THING as racism against white people. The end. Goodbye.

[wavey.✨️]

May 22, 2014 12:14:56 GMT -5 ListenToItTwice said:

There is NO SUCH THING as racism against white people. The end. Goodbye.

[Physical]

Yeah "Drunk In Love" and "XO" did really poorly in callout. The fact that Drunk In Love made it to #12 on Pop radio based on Beyonce's name alone is great. I don't think Pop radio is racist per say, their listeners simply just have different tastes in music. That's why "Drunk In Love" was huge on Rhythmic and Urban, and not Pop. I don't think it's a race issue. And I mean, "All Of Me" "Happy" and "Talk Dirty" were all recently huge hits on Pop radio, so calling them racist is a little too extreme no?

[iggyazealiastan]

We all know that mainstream radio used to be quite racist and refused to play black artists - including MTV. Though black artists have still managed to top the charts since the '50s. Then came the 2000s, which was completely dominated by black urban artists - both at pop radio and Billboard. I don't have the numbers right now but if you look at how many white artists had Hot 100 #1s the entire it's staggeringly low.

The real issue at hand is that radio trends have shifted away from the urban sounds of the 2000s toward dance, EDM and alternative. There are mostly non-black artists making that kind of music at the moment. I think people are mistaking a genre shift for racial discrimination. I have no doubt that once urban music trends again at pop radio (it's already begun) that we'll see many more black artists rising at the format.

[Grün]

May 23, 2014 11:12:35 GMT -5 iggyazealiastan said:

We all know that mainstream radio used to be quite racist and refused to play black artists - including MTV. Though black artists have still managed to top the charts since the '50s. Then came the 2000s, which was completely dominated by black urban artists - both at pop radio and Billboard. I don't have the numbers right now but if you look at how many white artists had Hot 100 #1s the entire it's staggeringly low.

The real issue at hand is that radio trends have shifted away from the urban sounds of the 2000s toward dance, EDM and alternative. There are mostly non-black artists making that kind of music at the moment. I think people are mistaking a genre shift for racial discrimination. I have no doubt that once urban music trends again at pop radio (it's already begun) that we'll see many more black artists rising at the format.

FINALLY a valid opinion.

[GivesYouHell]

May 23, 2014 11:12:35 GMT -5 iggyazealiastan said:

We all know that mainstream radio used to be quite racist and refused to play black artists - including MTV. Though black artists have still managed to top the charts since the '50s. Then came the 2000s, which was completely dominated by black urban artists - both at pop radio and Billboard. I don't have the numbers right now but if you look at how many white artists had Hot 100 #1s the entire it's staggeringly low.

The real issue at hand is that radio trends have shifted away from the urban sounds of the 2000s toward dance, EDM and alternative. There are mostly non-black artists making that kind of music at the moment. I think people are mistaking a genre shift for racial discrimination. I have no doubt that once urban music trends again at pop radio (it's already begun) that we'll see many more black artists rising at the format.

I agree completely.

I like Beyonce but it is beyond ridiculous that her stans are calling Pop radio racist because they won't play her music like WTF?

It's like when Viva La Vida was released after the Urban domination (when tons of black artists were owning Pop radio) and right when Electro-Pop was getting ready to explode, it went to #1 on the Hot 100 and didn't even go Top 10 on Pop radio, they must've been racist against Coldplay right?

The fact that a song like DIL went Top 15 there is impressive enough, XO and Pretty Hurts's poor performance has nothing to do with racism they just didn't get connect with enough people. 

May 20, 2014 18:54:23 GMT -5 Fat Ass Kelly Price said:

May 20, 2014 16:37:17 GMT -5 Lahey's Lucky Star said:

How exactly is radio racist when the past three #1's were by black people and another one featured one?

This is this topic's equivalent of: "I can't be racist. My best friend is black!"

Not really.

IMO it's a great example of how Pop radio is open to playing black artists when they make music that suits today's music trends and their taste, if artists like Jason Derulo, Pharrell, John Legend, Rihanna, Aloe Blacc, Usher, Nicki, Jay-Z, Chris Brown, Drake and even new artists like Niko & Vinz (who are comfortably sitting at #3 on iTunes and storming up Pop radio) have all scored Top 10 hits there in recent years why would they suddenly have some racist grudge against Beyonce?

Now when it comes to white rappers being more likely to score hits at Pop radio (and especially globally) than Black rappers I agree, although I do think it should be noted that there have been several songs by Black rappers that have crossed over and smashed like In Da Club, Work It, Dilemma, Holy Grail, Gold Digger, Hot In Herre and several more so acting like they're always completely shunned is ridiculous.

Outside of his 2 singles that feature Rihanna and apart from 1 or 2 others they haven't even really embraced Eminem that much either. Racism will always be around, I don't think anyone is stupid to actually believe that it's over or at least I hope not, I just really hate how one of the first things black members have to go to when their fave is underperforming is crying out Racism, It's actually pretty sad and pathetic.

And before anyone starts trying it with me about that white privilege thing, I'm black so don't even.

[jjose712]

May 20, 2014 18:54:23 GMT -5 Fat Ass Kelly Price said:

May 20, 2014 16:37:17 GMT -5 Lahey's Lucky Star said:

How exactly is radio racist when the past three #1's were by black people and another one featured one?

This is this topic's equivalent of: "I can't be racist. My best friend is black!"

Anyway, can we talk about the lack of Asian stars in the American music industry (hell, in movies and television too)?

The truth is the number of successful black artist is way higher than their percentage of population.

I doubt being black has any negative effect in your career, at least not in radio (it's not like being openly gay wich seems to be the death of your commercial career).
That doesn't mean a black artist doesn't face racism. But in my opinion actors have a lot more difficulties than singers.

In fact there are less latino stars (singing in english) and way less asians.

And this could even work the other way round. I was very surprised that a song like Somo's Ride wich is a classical R&B song didn't even chart on Urban, wich by sound it would be its natural place

[jjose712]

May 22, 2014 12:14:56 GMT -5 ListenToItTwice said:

There is NO SUCH THING as racism against white people. The end. Goodbye.

That's not true. Racism is discrimination based on race, and there are a lot of places where whites are not the majority. You only need power to discriminate.
Of course, at least in western societies racism against whites is very limited on comparision with what other races suffer

[Deleted]

May 24, 2014 14:43:47 GMT -5 jjose712 said:

And this could even work the other way round. I was very surprised that a song like Somo's Ride wich is a classical R&B song didn't even chart on Urban, wich by sound it would be its natural place

That flopped because it sounds like it's from 2007, and Urban isn't playing that kind of song. K. Michelle's last single sounded like it was from the same time period and also underperformed. It has nothing to do with race, especially not when "Royals" was a #1 Urban hit and "Dark Horse" a Top 10.

[jjose712]

May 24, 2014 14:55:05 GMT -5 @jazzysoul47 said:

May 24, 2014 14:43:47 GMT -5 jjose712 said:

And this could even work the other way round. I was very surprised that a song like Somo's Ride wich is a classical R&B song didn't even chart on Urban, wich by sound it would be its natural place

That flopped because it sounds like it's from 2007, and Urban isn't playing that kind of song. K. Michelle's last single sounded like it was from the same time period and also underperformed. It has nothing to do with race, especially not when "Royals" was a #1 Urban hit and "Dark Horse" a Top 10.

To be fair a was surprised at the reception All of me had in Urban charts. It seemed it's natural place but it was a lot less successful than in other formats. Probably it's because the sound it's not what they want now (i recognize that i don't follow urban charts so what i associate with urban sound is probably not accurate right now)

[#LisaRinna]

May 24, 2014 15:00:55 GMT -5 jjose712 said:

May 24, 2014 14:55:05 GMT -5 @jazzysoul47 said:

That flopped because it sounds like it's from 2007, and Urban isn't playing that kind of song. K. Michelle's last single sounded like it was from the same time period and also underperformed. It has nothing to do with race, especially not when "Royals" was a #1 Urban hit and "Dark Horse" a Top 10.

To be fair a was surprised at the reception All of me had in Urban charts. It seemed it's natural place but it was a lot less successful than in other formats. Probably it's because the sound it's not what they want now (i recognize that i don't follow urban charts so what i associate with urban sound is probably not accurate right now)

Really? Do you think an Adult Contemporary ballad should've topped the Urban chart?