--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> >That must have been before all that gangsta hip hop
> crap - a "black"
> >identity invented by white media moguls.
>
I guess you never heard of Stagger Lee, who shot poor Billy in the head aroung 1900. The badass is an old bad black tradition. A generation ago, it was the pimp, as in Melvin Van Peeble's movies. 50 years ago, Malcom X (then Little, aka Detroit Red) incarnated the thug ideal and memorably dissected in it in his Autobiography, see also Bigger Thomas in Wright's Native Son. In _his_ vatious autobiographies, Louis Armstrong tells memorable tales of various thugs he knew in New Orleans of the teen. The type is immediate recognizable. Armstrong himselg was of course possibly nicest, sweetest, most gentle man in human history. jks
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