CosPlayers
Disclaimer: ‘Culturist’ rant.
These thoughts were triggered by my annoyance with inside outsiders…
I am not one to tell someone where they belong because I’m no one’s gatekeeper. But in regards to my culture…I feel the need to make strong suggestions. I am an African American woman in every sense of the word(s)…and it wasn’t until recently that I figured out how much of a flex that is. Because living in the kind of world I was born into hasn’t always made the acceptance of my kind of blackness an easy thing. When I look at my timeline…the top black influencers usually have European features, lighter skin tones, or are native to other cultures. Most of the time…they have all three. ‘Off black’ has slowly become the symbol for blackness. So feeding my senses with images that reflect my kind of blackness has had to be intentional. Doing it this way makes it easier to ingest the more socially acceptable images plastered on my screens. This week I was given another reminder of the influence the ‘on black’ culture provides after witnessing two non-black women who are going out of their way to imitate us…allegedly.
Bia and Cardi B appear to be in a tussle over who can cosplay black culture the best and I’m here for it because the music being produced from this feud is entertaining. But in all the discussions I’ve heard on the subject…no one is pointing out the cultural appropriation of it all. Bia is accusing Cardi of copying her whole persona but my issue with this ‘beef’ is that both of them are cosplaying the cultural persona of ‘double A’ blackness. From the culturally appropriated hairstyles, to the dialect/slang they use, to the field they chose as their profession. So all I saw when I tried to dissect both perspectives were two culturally ambiguous women who bogarted their way into black culture because my culture is more comfortable seeing black adjacent women representing us.
Cardi’s breakout hit copied the flow of a popular black artist who is native to another culture and Bia’s breakout hit featured a popular black artist who also happens to belong to another culture. All of these people have one thing in common and that’s the fact that they are all inside and outside of the ‘foundational’ culture…at the same damn time. Which is what frustrates me the most about female rap because the artists who actually speak for our culture…in a positive way…are outshined by culture vulture’s who we are forced to believe look better ‘acting black’ than black artists who actually are. If this is going to be a ‘cultural’ beef over hoe talk and up and coming talent…I’d rather it be between Sexyy Red and Flo Milli. Because these women are actually native to the culture. But instead we have to listen to two outsiders ,who come from a culturally rich heritage of music, skate all through our culture with no one questioning why they’re here.
We would never see an African American being accepted in a Jamaican space of music…rapping in Patois. We would never see an African American being accepted in a Latin space rapping in Spanish. And we would never see an African American going into an Indian space rapping in Hindi. Why? Because outsiders aren’t a part of their culture and everyone would point that out. But for whatever reason…outsiders become more successful when cosplaying our culture. That is hella weird to me. I probably wouldn’t care as much if either of these women rapped about the positivity within the community whose culture they profit off of appropriating…but it’s just more money and sex talk. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to see how removed from black culture…black people actually are but it’s getting scary. So now my question is…why does it pay more to be someone else in this world? And why is that ‘someone else’ always the group constantly being made to feel less than…even though we are the people that other people profit off of pretending to be?
Love,
Choosy
