Open AccessThe Burden of Racial Innocence: British-Invasion Rock Memoirs and the U.S. South
Author(s) -
Matthew D. Sutton
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
european journal of life writing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2211-243X
DOI - 10.21827/ejlw.11.38627
Subject(s) - innocence , complicity , memoir , acknowledgement , culpability , virtue , racism , white (mutation) , power (physics) , subject (documents) , gender studies , history , convict , sociology , criminology , law , political science , art history , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , computer security , quantum mechanics , library science , computer science , gene
Mid-sixties British rock musicians have rationalized their firsthand experience and profitable interactions with American racial segregation by adopting a stance of racial innocence, or a belief that youth and virtue make one immune to charges of complicity with organized structures of racism. This almost childlike subject-positioning disingenuously separates musicians’ expertise on African American blues from a more mature acknowledgement of the oppressive racial conditions that shaped the music, implicitly excluding them from culpability in the continued imbalance of power between black and white musicians.