For more than two centuries, cash crops, such as cotton, tobacco, and sugar cane, informed America’s economic prosperity. Southern states, where cash crops were cultivated, quickly became the economic engine of the once young nation. Those behind the cultivation of these valued products, however, did not share in this fortune. Shackled and dehumanized, African-American slaves represented the South’s most important investment as well as the bulk of their wealth. Through literal blood, sweat, and tears, these black slaves produced what the Southern white elite would come to build their culture and society around. 400 years later, and though slavery has been abolished for nearly half that time, African Americans still find themselves the producers of a product overwhelmingly indulged and consumed by a white elite – not cash crops this time, but black culture itself.

Once considered less than human, African Americans are now regarded as hallmarks of human creativity, with their culture informing not only America’s cultural hegemony but global popular culture as well. The parallel to slavery is admittedly absent of a particularly heinous brutalized experience, especially as a critical difference lies in how the white mainstream now seemingly responds to blackness (with overwhelming enthusiasm and fervent consumption). A term can be applied to this mainstream fascination with black culture – Negrophilia. Originally used to describe the craze for black culture that once swept 1920s Paris, Negrophilia has found contemporary meaning within American popular culture. While a substantial power shift has certainly occurred in American popular culture in the direction of African Americans, it has become increasingly apparent that this power has not translated into American society, specifically in terms of institutional racism and its continued pervasiveness. In fact, one could argue this mainstream consumption of black culture has reinforced the historical marginalization of African Americans. Under the mentorship of Dr. Ellen Gorman, I have been able to effectively interrogate this paradox within American popular culture.