Malt Liquor and race

The ethics of making malt liquor hip from The Accidental Blogger via 3quarksdaily.

Some malt liquor drinkers were just after cheap booze, as they had been since the Depression, but the majority were college students or nine-to-fivers playing a game of racial masquerade. It wasn't just black people who liked to imagine themselves as Billy Dee Williams or Snoop Dogg.

By drinking a 40, anyone could pretend to be a black outlaw, someone who didn’t have to worry about getting up in the morning, someone who just didn’t give a fuck. In a variant on the minstrel tradition, these drinkers adopted a stereotyped black identity as a form of entertainment and psychic release.