So there was a recent online debate started about Awkwafina and her performance of black caricatures. This prompted me to think about how stereotypical blackness has different effects for different people especially depending on how you look and what your race is. Remember: anti-blackness is global and it is found even in many communities that are considered marginalized.

While real black people are losing job opportunities for something as fundamental as their names (because: too “ghetto”), people of different races establish whole careers on those same stereotypes. While real black people get harassed and kicked out of schools because of their hair, people of different races take our styles (at the expense of their tender ass scalps) and even pass them off as their own.

The very things that breathe life into the careers and phony personalities of these appropriators, are the same things that society uses to keep black people oppressed and out of life-changing/improving spaces. Honestly, the bottom line is that if Awkwafina was white, everyone would be up in arms about the pathetic attempts at a tiresome “blaccent”. But someone doesn’t need to be white to perform blackface and I think we all need to remember that.

Awkwafina has built her ENTIRE career off of Blackness—her "rap," her roles in Oceans 8 & CRA, her image are ALL minstrel affectations of Black American culture, music, & dress. She monetizes performing Blackness—to be rewarded for Black culture in a way that Black ppl are not. pic.twitter.com/H5Ymi0XVZj

— Muqing M. Zhang (@muqingmzhang) August 15, 2018

Sensible Latinos, Asians, etc know that there is rampant anti-blackness in their communities and they are trying to get rid of it. We see the phenomena: many people of these races can’t even take Black people home to their parents, but they’re not afraid to profit off of/dilute/destroy the art, culture, music etc that we had to create to simply survive. Many won’t date, marry, hire or talk to black people but they wanna talk like us (or at least talk like how society tells you we all speak).

As society progresses and more representation finds its way to us through media…we must make sure to fix the problems that already exist and not to create new ones. Let us be aware of the twisted society that white-supremacy has created and dismantle it. We want to create a better world and not solidify the engrained behaviors and beliefs that have already brought us down such a terrible path. Watch my video on the subject here: