Are blackness and whiteness useful concepts in the study of pop music?

As a way of describing a particular type of music I would not agree this to be a useful way to describe a piece of pop music. I do not believe music can or should be segregated in this fashion due to the idea that white and black artists rend to inspire each other. Many blues and folk artists were black and inspired many of some of greatest rock legends of the last century and yet rock music is still a very multicultural thing. Modern R&B is something you could possibly name as black music as many of the artists in this genre are black, however when we look at those who listen to R&B we can see that the audience is mostly mixed race therefore I don't believe we can simply call R&B black music. While I still believe that music is culturally defined, I also believe that it can influence anyone who listens to it and that the audience decides what it should be called, therefore I think this concept is an unhelpful way of describing pop music.