Prejudice Unending or Nearsightedness

[intaglio]

Just today I saw this video on Huffington Post

TURF FEINZ "RIP Rich D"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQRRnAhmB58

and I am forced to wonder, yet again, why the turfers, b-boys, b-girls (NOT breakdancers) have never broken through into gymnastics?

For 30 years the street has been producing dancers, athletes and gymnasts of power, style, grace and, perhaps more important, originality but they are never seen within the sacred and largely white fortress of gymnastics. These youngsters are not kids and play round making moves of immense difficulty for the joy and pride of it. If they are “lucky” some producer will pick up on what they do and put them on stage for a brief run in a dance show, then they will be lost and forgotten because the money has been made and the continual search for novelty has moved on.

Contrast this with Parkour(PK) and Freerunning; both urban skills which owe much to white initiators, Foucan and Belle. Elements of PK and Freerunning did exist (notably in martial arts films) but since has been codified and has begun to be absorbed into mainstream culture; the Royal Marines now have Freerunning as part of their training and I have no doubt other military groups will be using it. Can this readiness to learn from one particular part of urban culture be entirely divorced from the ethnicity of the participants?

Perhaps by posting this on DU I am preaching to the converted, perhaps I am wrong in seeing this as prejudice but I think it is something that needs to be addressed.