One of my favorite elements of this course has been the fact that we’re talking about the racism in our history and how we’re exploring the elements of our history through sound. Contrary to how American political culture has been (and somewhat still is) segregated, the theory that American popular culture has a desire for “mixing” and toys with integration. I felt sort of uneasy with this because it is essentially claiming that the Afro-American influence is only allowed when it’s not performed/provided by Afro-Americans. For example, many artists performed songs with Afro-American musicians, but didn’t allow the public to know that because it wasn’t accepted. For me, it’s difficult to separate politics from other aspects of culture because of how severely it sets the tone for day to day interactions. I do think that this point of view might be because I’m a young Muslim growing up in a post 9/11 era where my identity is highly politicized on a daily basis so it’s hard to not view everything politically. Although popular music might’ve had more of a desire to mix sounds, I don’t think that it was a sign of progress because of how racist society and politics were.