Its also overly simplistic to say hip-hop isn't black culture. Or at least *a* black culture. But its not only black. And being black doesn't mean you are automatically credited with its existence.

But this goes more to my general attitude toward language and culture in general. Its a constant morphing living breathing series of events and ideas that pop off under very complex and changing scenarios and continue to morph and evolve and spread and migrate.

I have ancestry of my own that I'm very proud of and that is connected to cultural things that I feel very close to. I still would be wrong to claim it for myself and tell others I created it and they can't get it. Its just not how culture works.

If you are exposed to things and that is what you partook in, the books of the future would look to those things to describe your culture. If a Frankie Scambolini from down the block grew up eating mostly tacos and beef teriyaki, never took to Italian food like his black friend Bobby who loves ziti, then the truth would be Frankie's culture is tacos and teriyaki and Bobby's is ziti. It doesn't matter what their grandparents ate, because the future defines a culture by what people actually DID