This gesture was avoidant, devious, disingenuous, rude. It was an inducement to overlook the show’s discomfiting racial dynamic, suggesting that the issues brought up by its lineup — with two popular black rappers, each with more radio and chart success than the headliners, relegated to the evening opening slots — have little to do with race.

That is, naturally, absurd, but it is a clear reflection of a somewhat unexpected emergent racial reality in hip-hop. White rappers — especially in the wake of the success of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and, to a lesser degree, Iggy Azalea — are now finding paths to success that have little if anything to do with black acceptance.

For decades, white rappers who have reached wide renown — and plenty who never did — have employed a handful of familiar strategies. Initially, a co-sign — an imprimatur of authenticity, or at least tolerance, given by an established black artist — was essential. Think of Dr. Dre shepherding Eminem, or Run-D.M.C. taking the Beastie Boys on tour. (By contrast, remember the struggles of the nonsponsored Vanilla Ice.) More recently, fealty to the genre’s black-built history has been essential, as evinced by nostalgists like Action Bronson and Your Old Droog.

But now we have arrived in the post-accountability era of white rap, when white artists are flourishing almost wholly outside the established hip-hop industry, evading black gatekeepers and going directly to overwhelmingly white consumers, resulting in what can feel like a parallel world, aware of hip-hop’s center but studiously avoiding it.

This is striking, and it indicates a potential sea change. Hip-hop has long been a site of racial borrowing, but it has resisted whitewashing, owing to a combination of politics (explicit and implicit), its sustained connection to and dependence on the creativity of young black musicians and also its increasing financial viability (for some). It’s been inevitable, given how widespread the genre’s popularity and influence is four decades after its birth, that gobs of white rappers would come along, craved by white audiences. But until recently, the most visible white artists have generally operated with deference, understanding their role in the historical ecosystem.