Blue Eyed Soul: Past and Present

Most music genres tend to be associated with a particular race/ethnicity, though few are such that the way of classifying an artist within that genre necessitates a particular race. Two sub-genres that do this, however, are brown-eyed and blue-eyed soul. Both became popular when white and Latino and Italian musicians began to imitate the music of African-American soul musicians, particularly those on the Motown and Stax record labels. Different descriptions of the terms I found differed in their perception of these soul variants. While it was ignored on many sites and stated that blue and brown-eyed soul were simply influenced by African American musicians, several others highlighted the fact that many of these artists were remaking, not simply imitating, music for a white audience.

The term seems to be controversial in both its original and modern significations. The fact that blue-eyed soul remains exclusive to any but white artists coupled with the fact that an artist who may think of themselves as simply as soul, if they are white, will be classified as blue-eyed soul highlight the continued racial tensions in the music industry. The separation of soul along racial lines made me think of the idea of "passing" and how this is more complicated than other genres whose names are not racially exclusive like blue-eyed soul. One artist who has been viewed as trying to pass is Justin Timberlake. This blog post is intended to be comical but it also highlights some of the problems inherited from blue-eyed soul's past:

http://since1865.blogspot.com/2008/02/justin-timberlake-you-are-not-black.html

What does the continued existence of blue-eyed soul as a sub-genre highlight about race relations both within music and more generally in America? Does the history of the dilution of soul for a white audience manifest itself in modern blue-eyed soul? To what extent does the sub-genre's continuance and popularity veil its past? Additionally, do you see similarities in other genres or is this a unique case?