yesterday's enthusiast

foureyedfreezy:

Okay, wow. 

People are getting confused. 

Cultural appropriation is not “keeping white people from sharing cultures”. For starters, cultures aren’t about sharing. It’s about pride after years of building that culture. We can share, but no one is entitled to it. Secondly, we don’t care if you want to be experience a different culture. But too many people don’t respect it when doing so. Sexualizing it isn’t respectful. Blackface and brownface isn’t respectful. Altering it as a cheap knock off bought from a costume store isn’t respectful. Then call people of color racist names for wearing the same thing is certainly not respectful. Nor is claiming you started the “trend” when people of color made it decades before it was considered fashionable. It’s unfair that we get punished for how we look, but white people can copy it and it’s “cool”. It’s unfair how people ignore what people of color have to say, but that one non-white person says “I’m not offended by this” then suddenly racism and cultural appropriation is considered make believed or equating criticism as an overreaction. 

            BLACK AND BROWN PEOPLE ARE NOT HIVE MINDS. 

We are individuals like everyone else, which is fine. People have a different level of what’s offensive. But using a person of color with a different opinion is not an excuse to justify racism. The “I have a___ friend” excuse needs to die.

I can’t speak for all countries. But America has a bad habit of racial profiling people of color for wearing cultural outfits. We’re seen as “thugs”, “illegal immigrants”, or “terrorists” for our appearances. Children of color are suspended or expelled from school, adults of color fired from their jobs or prevented from getting jobs, or arrested, beaten, or killed, for wearing our cultural outfits. This is why we take this seriously. So yes, I get uneasy when white women with braids are viewed as pretty but black women (and girls) are called “ghetto” or “ugly” for their braids, then stereotyped as “angry black women” for standing up for themselves against racist haters. Then those same white women trying so hard to be look black so bad, then put down black women or other women of color. That’s the type of cultural appropriation that pisses me off.