Rogin in dialogue with Jacobson and Morrison

I found Rogin’s highlighting of the term “musical miscegenation” to be very interesting in how it related to the minstrelsy phenomenon that dominated early 20^th century entertainment. When thinking about Morrison’s editorial and Jacobson’s article, I felt that this analysis of The Jazz Singer definitely fit in with both of their main arguments in multiple ways while also placing into conversation other arguments that white immigrant groups who engaged with blackface, specifically Jews, may have actually been in solidarity with Blacks.

With regards to Jacobson’s piece about whiteness and the American melting pot, Rogin explains how assimilation was a central theme in The Jazz Singer. Interestingly, Jakie “finds his voice through black music,” and therefore, goes on to succeed as a blackface singer. Rogin uses black music and jazz interchangeably with a sense of American citizenship. It isn’t through performing as an Anglo-American that frees Jews who perform in blackface from anti-semitism, but it’s performing as a Black American that allows Jews to mask their identities and hide the potential ethnic cues that come with being Jewish to their white audiences. I think Rogin’s piece can be directly put in conversation with Morrison. Rogin writes, “Substituting blackface doubling for ethnic and racial variety, the movie points in spite of itself to another truth about the melting pot, not the cooperative creation of something new but assimilation to old inequalities” (439). This is a very important point that fits in line with Morrison’s “off the backs of blacks” argument, in which white immigrant groups exploited black identities and used blackness as a stepping stone to gain their places in American society.