unusualmusic_lj_archive

which is bloody HILARIOUS, considering the typical state of affairs, and to make matters worse:

via:

racebending

Black belt jonesing: American martial arts culture's roots in the black community

Rumble in the Bronx
The fact is, African Americans were the first community to embrace martial arts in the U.S., and without that community's active support, Asian fighting disciplines would never have gained the foothold they now have in the American consciousness, as both a practice and a pop-culture influence.

"The story of martial arts in black communities is part of a much bigger narrative of African American interest in Asian culture," says Amy Obugo Ongiri, assistant professor of English at the University of Florida and author of the forthcoming book "Spectacular Blackness." "People want to read African Americans and Asians as being in conflict rather than engaged in creative exchange. But black interest in Asian culture has a long history, and what you see is that by the '60s and '70s, a bunch of factors led to the consolidation of that interest."
The return of soldiers from Korea and Vietnam; the growth of Asia as an export power; white flight from the inner cities, and the rise of black nationalism -- all of these phenomena set the stage for the unique cultural intersection that was the rise of martial arts cinema.
"As white people abandoned the cities, all these downtown theaters became spaces for people of color," says Ongiri. "Theater owners started screening stuff that was less marketable, mostly cheap imports -- and that meant martial arts movies."
And for generations of urban black youth who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, grindhouse theaters screening kung fu double features had an irresistible gravitational pull.

"We'd go and watch films all day," remembers Warrington Hudlin, best known as the producer behind films such as "House Party" and "Boomerang" and the children's television series "Bebe's Kids." "The whole time we'd be going, 'Oh man, how'd they do that?' Because it happened so fast, you'd have to screen a film three or four times to get the technique. So we'd be like, 'Okay, man, you watch his feet, I'll watch his hands, and we'll compare notes in the lobby.' Me and my friends, we used to live in those theaters."

...

"We were the early adopters of martial arts in this country," says Hudlin. "That's why it was so irritating to me that a movie like 'The Forbidden Kingdom' was made, in which Jet Li and Jackie Chan teach their skills to a white kid from Boston."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/10/28/apop102809.DTL#ixzz0VLlokvNh

The Black Heroes of the Martial Arts