“This second trope, the more "benign" of what I call minstrelsy's brute/dandy dyad, is the (northern) dandy. It is the northern dandy that represents America's anxiety over the meanings of political democratization and freedom as the potential realization of educated and socio-politically equal Black minds and bodies (Cockrell, 1997; Forbes, 2008; Lott, 1995). According to Louis Althusser, it should come as little surprise that the staging ground for this political anxiety finds its way into cultural expression. He writes: "in the theatrical world, as in the aesthetic world more generally, ideology is always in essence the site of a competition and a struggle in which the sound and fury of humanity's political and social struggles are faintly or sharply echoed ... " (as cited in Bean, Hatch, & McNamara, 1996, p. 3). As a part of the endless news cycle, politics — particularly the presidential political cycle - are now a part of that staging ground. Presidential elections have become a kind of national pastime, a never ending horse race (Hollihan, 2009) where candidates of different races can be seen as social and political ciphers working to answer the perennial socio-political question of "Who's on First?" Likewise, American minstrelsy, as a home grown manifestation of nineteenth century popular culture, was the pastime of its day. As such it expressed the anxieties of mass racial, class, and political shiftings. These anxieties over mobility are, I would suggest, quintessentially American and continue to find conscious and unconscious expression in contemporary culture and its national imaginary.'"
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