Cultural Appropriation: The Use and Abuse of Black Women in Today’s Media
Now that we’ve all gotten ourselves relatively acquainted with the internet and the ever-growing social media world, actions that seemed normal in our society are under harsher scrutiny, and they spark attention in those who are not “asleep”. Women of color, specifically black women, are associated with a very contradicting stigma that not only exploits them, but dehumanizes them. There are poisonous images of how black women are throughout our media and everyday lives, and it clouds the judgement and self-awareness of other young black women with its self-destructiveness.
The common trope of the “Angry Black Woman” has been used time and time again in movies (Diary of a Mad Black Woman), TV Shows (Love & Hip Hip), and social media. people love to poke fun at this sometimes admittedly funny stereotype. I can’t deny ever chuckling at a meme about a strict African American mother telling her kids that they better have taken out some food to defrost, and said kids would freak out because they forgot to take it out and they don’t want to get in trouble. But, there are sometimes where these posts are less “funny” and more “fucked up”. Seeing posts that talk trash about black women being a certain way, then praising and glorifying a white woman, or even a woman of color who is light skinned. It seems the problem isn’t just with black women, it’s with black women with dark skin. Dark skinned women are constantly ridiculed for being “loud”, “jealous”, “crazy”, but when talking about a latina woman who acts the same way, it’s “goals”, “bae”, “wifey”. For example, everyone, including me, loves Cardi B, the rapper and former reality show actress. She’s literally famous and adored for having that stereotypical extra, loud, foul mouthed personality that if even sniffed on a dark skinned woman would be considered trashy and ghetto.
It’s not even just personalities that seem to come with a double standard. even black women’s bodies are being transferred back and forth between other races like some USB flash drive. I’m not saying that only black women can have this specific hourglass body shape that I’m discussing here, but these are features that I personally have experienced criticism and bullying for when I was young. So many black girls grow up with people making fun of their “dirty hair” (dreadlocks or natural, kinky hair), big lips and butts, and their dark skin. That was years ago, and now, white people and non poc start filling up their lips, getting spray tans, butt implants, even getting the same hairstyles. This type of behavior reduces racial identity to a mere accessory and they frame racial interaction as a short-lived tourist encounter ( Vats, A, 2014). People, like the Kardashians and Kylie Jenner constantly take bits and pieces of black culture and black physiques and add it to their own body, and they make it into a fashion statement. These people are literally considered “icons” for doing what black people have been doing for centuries. It’d seemed strange that these issues are brought to light in such a public space like the internet, and even in politics, because just a few years ago, these things were only mentioned amongst like company, usually gendered places like salons (Brock, André; Kvasny, Lynette; Hales, Kayla; 2010).
People even try and justify what they’re doing by diminishing the value of these aspects by saying “it’s just a spray tan, it’s just a hairstyle”. But what they call “just a hairstyle” is a protective style that Africans and other people of color have used on their specific hair type for thousands of years and has been passed down through their culture. What they call “just a spray tan” is what people of color have literally been killed for, enslaved for, denied basic human rights for. So excuse us if we kind of take offense to your little fashion trend. To black people, this isn’t a trend, it’s a lifestyle, it’s tradition, it’s our culture, it’s our life. And when these little things are taken from us and blasted for white people to say it’s cute, it’s fun, it’s trendy, it literally dehumanizes black people, and breaks them down to just what you want to see of us.
Some people don’t see the issue, and I believe they don’t see the issue because they refuse to see race. And people who refuse to see race, refuse to see, period. Acknowledging and respecting all races is what makes you “woke”, what makes you conscious of the issues in our society. When you choose to not see race, you choose to not see the differences between us. Yes, we are all human beings with blood and guts, but we all come from different places, we all have different experiences and cultures, and not seeing race means not seeing what makes each individual human being who they are. Sede Alonge from The Guardian says, “ While I appreciate the arguments in favour of black women taking pride in their natural hair, I can’t help feeling that the politics of hair is fast becoming another issue that exacerbates the racial divide. It has also become a case of some women wanting to dictate to other women how they should wear their hair.”(2015) This is what I mean by not wanting to see race. When you don’t see race, hair becomes just hair. Hairstyles lose their meaning, and therefore culture is lost.
It’s hard to decipher whether these people purposefully mean to appropriate black culture, or whether it’s a mean to promote tolerance and acceptance (Ghandnoosh, N. (2010). If it’s the latter, then it’s not necessary to “wear” other people’s culture to promote acceptance. It may seem that simple to them, but to black women, it just means that they are taking apart the small aspects of what define them and add it to their own personal repertoire. If one wants to truly show tolerance/acceptance for another’s culture, simply respecting it and defending it from further discrimination is enough.
“I do think that people should not be so quick to call everything cultural appropriation. They should be flattered when people take things from their culture. Culture is shared. Everyone takes something from someone. And it’s like that time-transcending idiom: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”
Katrice Perkins says this, believing that culture is something to be passed around and shared like food. Culture is not as simple as that. People live for culture, people die for culture. They pass it down through generations and generations. So when someone comes and insults your culture, kills you for your culture, then turns around and takes that culture for themselves in the name of “sharing”, it’s insulting.
I am never one to restrict people from expressing themselves how they please, so long as they not cause harm to themselves or others. Although cultural appropriation does not physically harm people, the damage it does to young black girls can extend to their adult life, shaping the way they view the world and themselves, and not for the best. When our society learns to view black women less as a commodity, and more like the human beings they are, maybe the future they themselves won’t believe they are a commodity.