Jessica Pressler has a great little piece in the New York Times about how African American fans and creators of rock music have to negotiate a path between white fans of rock who assume they are outsiders and black fans of more traditionally black music who see them as sellouts.

The article unearths the complex layers through which we construct race in American culture.

Historically, of course, the foundations of rock were set by artists like Chuck Berry and Little Richard, but as with friends of different races who become more conscious of race as they enter high school, black musicians began to drift into genres in which they found more ready acceptance and less cooptation and compromise.

And, socially, the entire rock aesthetic is not a perfect cultural fit. Nelson George, author of “Buppies, B-Boys, Baps & Boho’s: Notes on Post-Soul Culture,” suggests,

Black kids do not want to go out with bummy clothes and dirty sneakers … There is a psychological subtext to that, about being in a culture where you are not valued and so you have to value yourself.

Yet, artists from Hendrix to Living Colour persist — and, as the article reveals, a black fan base for rock music is able to buck the resistance, maintain connections and sustain itself.

All of which reminds me of one of the best scenes in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” in which Mookie (Spike Lee’s own character) almost convinces Pino, the racist son of Sal, the pizza shop owner, that he is black. He asks him about his favorite basketball player (Magic Johnson) and his favorite movie star (Eddie Murphy). Then he says, “Last question: Who’s your favorite rock star?” Pino hesitates because he see the trap he has already entered.

Vito, Pino’s brother, eventually has to say, “It’s Prince! He’s a Prince freak.”

Mookie then says, “Sounds funny to me. As much as you say nigger this and nigger that, all your favorite people are ‘niggers.’”

To which Pino responds, “It’s different. Magic, Eddie, Prince are not niggers, I mean, are not Black. I mean, they’re Black but not really Black. They’re more than Black. It’s different.”

In that context, whatever you hear someone like Lenny Kravitz (not my cup of tea) or, for that matter, Prince this weekend during the Super Bowl halftime show, you have to stand up and cheer for people whose iconoclastic choices force mainstream American culture to negotiate — and potentially reevaluate — its own assumptions.