Saturday, August 15, 2015

Cultural Appropriation BY:KB 8.15.15

Not too long ago a youngster, Zendaya Coleman, took a few entertainment news commentators to task about their comments on her desire to wear her hair in faux locs to an awards ceremony. The young actress was most recently quoted as saying:

"You can go about it as cultural appreciation or cultural appropriation," Coleman explained. "You have to be very careful. Some things are really sacred and important to other cultures, so you have to be aware, politically, about those things before you just adopt them."
The performer added that the key to appreciating a culture is to understand the history behind it. 
"I’m someone who feels uncomfortable with things unless I know [about them]," she told Nylon. "I’m not going to try something unless I’ve taken the time and effort to learn about it. I just think with the Internet and the resources we have, you should do a little research."

I commend her desire to “represent” so to speak but I’m going to have to throw a penalty flag on the whole situation…..sprinkle a little salt if you will. It’s all cultural appropriation! Just because you like something does not mean you should try it….attach whatever “shaming” label you want to what I’m saying but it is what it is……

Think a few years back when the rap game and the hip-hop culture made its way to the suburbs. Mainstream society then coined the phrase “wigger”. For those of you not in the know the term means white nigger……..meaning that there is no place, rhyme or reason for a nice white kid in the burbs to adopt such a style.  First we had Eminem, a white boy with street cred….but once people discovered the 8 Mile section was a poor section of Detroit and that he really associated with Blacks he quickly became the “white trash” factor and was relegated to  an “overseers” position on the profit plantation. Then we have Tatum Channing and Justin Bieber musical and theatrical colonizers manipulated by a hierarchy that makes the once deemed “white nigger” culture acceptable as well as once again profitable.

I’m not going to just single out the mainstream…I’m also going to address people of color. We have been brainwashed. We have neglected our cultures, our people and our history far too long. We have deluded ourselves into embracing a standard of culture and beauty that has NEVER made provision for us as anything other than labor or entertainment. We spend billions of hard earned money on fake hair and hair straightening products. We’re walking around with blond hair and blue contact lenses. We’re spending grand theft money on slimming agents and vilifying our thick hipped, full lipped , darker sisters. We have adopted a Eurocentric “mammy” mindset about our own thereby creating a cultural divide within our own culture….We have embrace a new millennium mulatto, quadroon and octoroon standard of measure

Young Ms. Coleman was correct in saying to learn about the culture that you’re “borrowing” from because if more people took the time to learn about the thing that they’re appropriating they would learn that their portrayals are often no more that a modern day minstrel show. They have “borrowed” parts of a culture and reduced it to a caricature presented on a platform of stereotypes…excluding the  burnt cork, white gloves and banjos.

I am of African, Irish and Native ancestry, all of which are an oppressed people. All of which have been set against one another, here, on this soil, that we like to delude ourselves into  believing, is this great melting pot.  I have a rich supply of melanin, the world sees Black and I identify as such but I also do not neglect any of my other ancestry. I will no longer be forced to choose and accept that one thing is above or better than the other. I have no excuse for allow someone (something) to manipulate my history and culture. My history, in factual information, is now available to me….

In times like these I often quote a line from a George Clinton, Parliament (oh the irony in the name Parliament) song “free your mind and your a** will follow”


How ya livin’?

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