In the modern era, it perhaps began with the likes of Michael Jackson, Prince and Michael Jordan in the early 1980s and most certainly during the Golden Era of rap back in the early to mid-’90s where Americans, regardless of ethnicity, felt free articulate their love of stars of varying shades of melanin. Legendary rapper Ice T, for instance, strongly believes that hip-hop helped make mainstream Americans comfortable enough (and familiar enough) with black culture to entertain the possibility of a nonwhite being in charge of the White House.
