this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's a tough line to draw, because even if they aren't the main profitees, the culture where the thing originated often still profited. e.g. AFAIK rock'n'roll getting popular with white americans was pretty good for black americans, even though many of the best selling artists (e.g. Elvis Presley) were white.

[–] aliceblossom 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The popularization of Black American music is indeed a complex topic in this arena. Like, obviously a lot of cultural outsiders made a lot of money off of the situation, but there were at least some benefits to the arrangement, although whether or not they outweighed the cons is perhaps difficult to say. For example, if outsiders had abstained entirely from profiting, what would have changed? Obviously more of the money made percentage-wise would've gone to the owning culture, but would there have been less money overall? Would it have reached the same levels of popularity? If so, it almost certainly wouldn't've happened as quickly, right? These are difficult questions to answer and I'm not educated enough in this area to really offer any. So, while not worth a damn, my gut feelings is that there are at least some strong arguments as to why overall the absence of outsider profiting would've been better for the owning culture.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

With rock'n'roll, it was not even just about money, it also did a pretty good job of bridging the gap between black and white people - I don't think it's realistic to say that this would have worked equally well if all the bands had been black.