Learning How to Make Life Swing

How do we explain the contradiction between the centrality of African-American culture in the U.S. and the simultaneous marginality of African-American people in contemporary American society? Pursuing an answer to this question through my ethnographic work on the Lindy Hop led to a radical rethinking of current approaches to cultural appropriation. This article serves as an intervention into ethnographic research on race and ethnicity by synthesizing Wacquant's carnal sociology with his call for the formation of an analytical theory of racial domination. This synthesis, in which theory and method work reciprocally, offers a new model for undertaking research in the areas of race and ethnicity by which we are able to differentiate and dissect the material and symbolic mechanisms that generate racial domination in particular historical contexts.