Race, Music, and Copyright

In class today we talked about how Chuck Berry's riffs were taken and used in many of the Beach Boy's songs, which soon topped the charts, and later turned the Beach Boys into rock and roll icons. There was obviously a difference between how the Beach Boys were able to compose and produce music and how Chuck Berry could: the Beach Boys were white, and therefore would never be turned away by a record producer based on the color of their skin. It was hard to find African American musicians distinguished enough to have copyright laws on their music, mostly because they had less opportunity in the main stream music industry. Do you think that white producers were intimidated that African American musicians were making music as well as, or even better than, the white musicians they represented? Could this intimidation be a factor as to why people like Chuck Berry's music was stolen?