White people love black art until it forces them to see or engage black pain beyond caricatures and stereotypes. To avoid confronting black pain, white audiences turn to white artists who appropriate black art without substance.

I remember once, when I was a kid, hearing Johnny Winter singing “Tired of Tryin’ ” with Muddy Waters on guitar, on the Nothin’ but the Blues album, and hearing him sing and liking what I heard and then looking at a picture of him on the album and double-taking, maybe triple-taking, and then wondering what it meant to be black (or white, or albino)