has found this view, for example, in Norman Mailer,[1][2][3] Jack Kerouac, and other Beatnik authors of the 1950s of romantic racism.
They maintain that the dominant mainstream culture of the 1950s in the United States stressed conformity and held up middle-class suburban families as the cultural ideal, and that it was indifferent to art and literature, upheld racial segregation, and despised or ignored black achievements, such as jazz.
Mailer's essay "The White Negro" offers a clear description of this romanticization of the racial Other in American culture.
Mailer, a great fan of jazz music, created his concept of what it meant to be "hip", or a member of the white urban counterculture, largely on his perception of the culture of urban African-Americans (with whom the expression "hip", meaning "in the know", originated).
[citation needed] Critics consider Mailer's depictions of what he imagines African-American life to be like as an instance of what they call "romantic racism", contending that he implies that life in urban ghettoes—depicted as filled with sex, drugs, and violence—is somehow enriched, rather than hurt, by poverty and crime.