I deleted that anecdote because it was unnecessarily personal and distracting.
But yeah -- Lemonade was not written for me. And as I originally wrote, if it was the only record available iTunes/Spotify, I would have no cultural connection to popular music[1]. (good thing, bad thing, you decide!)
Crossword puzzle authors being only white men is absolutely culturally separate from many people.
And maybe that's OK. It's no one's job to be all things to all people. Still, it's clearly structurally unequal.
Now...whether it's important or interesting that other cultures are denied the pleasures of crossword puzzles... That's a good question. I'm of the general opinion that those other cultures are not missing much.
Crossword puzzles might just be an old white person anachronism that will fade out in a generation or two. The likelihood of that increases if crosswords are not accessible to our future majority-minority population.
[1] This is superficially relevant because Lemonade is a cultural touchstone, universally acclaimed, and (according to Wikipedia) contains elements of a dozen musical genres, more than half of which are personally meaningful to me -- and yet I found it to be inaccessible to me when it was released. Clearly I owe it to myself to re-listen.
But yeah -- Lemonade was not written for me. And as I originally wrote, if it was the only record available iTunes/Spotify, I would have no cultural connection to popular music[1]. (good thing, bad thing, you decide!)
Crossword puzzle authors being only white men is absolutely culturally separate from many people.
And maybe that's OK. It's no one's job to be all things to all people. Still, it's clearly structurally unequal.
Now...whether it's important or interesting that other cultures are denied the pleasures of crossword puzzles... That's a good question. I'm of the general opinion that those other cultures are not missing much.
Crossword puzzles might just be an old white person anachronism that will fade out in a generation or two. The likelihood of that increases if crosswords are not accessible to our future majority-minority population.
[1] This is superficially relevant because Lemonade is a cultural touchstone, universally acclaimed, and (according to Wikipedia) contains elements of a dozen musical genres, more than half of which are personally meaningful to me -- and yet I found it to be inaccessible to me when it was released. Clearly I owe it to myself to re-listen.