Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
Another question of course is what this NBA-infused African-American culture actually has to do with Toronto. Toronto's black community is mostly Afro-Caribbean and increasingly sub-Saharan African. It's none of my business of course but I still find it odd (and given the results south of the border, maybe a bit worrisome) to have African-American identity markers generally imported and laid onto Toronto's black community lock, stock and barrel, as if it was the most natural thing in the world: "they're black down there, we're black up here, s'all the same!"
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But Toronto's black community (and by extension, its youth culture as a whole)
does have a heavy Caribbean - and increasingly, African - influence. Just about any black kid in Toronto, born here or otherwise, is just as likely to listen to soca as they are to American hip hop (no surprise either that Toronto hip hop has long had a lot of dancehall-derived rhythms), prefer beef patties and rice & peas to fried chicken and grits, and uses Jamaican slang (or Arabic in more and more cases) interchangeably with North American. It's not quite as far out on the spectrum of Caribbean & African influence as it is in England (there's no Grime-equivalent here, for instance), but it's not quite American either.
I mean this came out like 16 years ago, about the difference between Toronto's (Caribbean-derived) slang and American slang: (how Canadian!)
• Video Link
And for what it's worth, Canada has just as much of claim to basketball as does the US. The first NBA game was played at Maple Leaf Gardens, after all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
There is an element of contemporary African-American culture that I think it is safe to say is not particularly desirable, and that glorifies violence, lawlessnes, disrespect for women, ignorance, and generally loutish behaviour.
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I think these sorts of concerns are a little unfounded. When we're talking about hip hop & basketball & "urban" culture and all that, we're talking about the dominant form of youth culture in the Anglosphere (and beyond) today, among all races & social classes. It's never been more popular or accepted than it is today. Yet today's generation of young people (again, of every race & social class) is far from being the most violent, sexist, or uneducated.
That sort of criticism strikes me as a little dated if anything. As we've seen time & time again for a few generations, aggressive content whether in music, video games, television, whatever has a lot of appeal, particularly to young males, but in and of itself it doesn't actually lead to violence.
If there's any criticism to be made of (most) contemporary hip hop and youth culture, it's how materialistic and fixated on luxury it can be - this in the face of the biggest imbalance between incomes and cost of living, and the largest income gap we've seen since the 20s; and in contrast to every other youth culture of the past half-century which have been decidedly anti-materialist and anti-establishmentarian. Today's kids are a little too comfortable with conforming to status quo economics, even when they're the ones losing out. But I guess that also speaks to their hussle & entrepreneurial quality. That and there isn't really anything left to rebel against, culturally speaking. Anyway, just musing now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shappy
Glenn Gould's Toronto pretty much exists exactly where he left it at St. Clair and Avenue (if you're interested in that sort of thing).
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Yep. Toronto is big enough to support at least a few different sides to it. But I don't know why anyone would expect that sort of reserved, soft-spoken intellectualism to act as the youthful face of Toronto. It never was.
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