White People Are “Swell”
Hello again, White people. How’re y’all doing? It’s the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, DC, today. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his famous “I Have A Dream” speech 50 years ago today in Washington, DC. There were white people there and at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. Honestly, if it wasn’t for white people, we wouldn’t have gotten far with the movement culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Thanks for that. I celebrate what you did.
What I don’t celebrate, now, is how White people have consistently stolen from my Black people and our culture to make money and get attention, like what Miley Cyrus is doing now with her version of twerking, which isn’t twerking at all. Twerking has links back to African fertility dances and was called “popping” in the early 90s (look up women dancing in 2 Live Crew videos or just do a YouTube search for Twerk by Lady…if you’re over 18). The Oxford dictionary now has a definition of twerking, entered in 2013, even though it’s been around in black culture for a while now. I hate that something that was considered crass and embarrassing for black people is now suddenly cool because enough high-profile white people saw it in a black strip club and are now making both piss-poor attempts at it and a lot of money from it. It’s a minstrel show now with Miley Cyrus and countless YouTube videos of people just not doing it right.
The fact that this exists and that all 4 instructions are 100% wrong is appalling.
It’s being treated as a great new thing that is revitalizing white culture like Columbus “discovering” America. I think this has to do with white Americans not really having a culture with which to identify that is separate from something tied to racial dominance and oppression of others who weren’t white. The Pilgrims and Founding Fathers willfully let go of British culture because of what it represented. It represented vile oppression and a country that treated its subjects so badly they had to leave to make their own way in a new world. The Native Americans were in the way and naked a lot of times, and that didn’t sit well with these new people, so they forced the natives to comply or drove them off the land to make room for themselves. Then they had to establish a culture but had to create it out of whatever was laying around because, hello, they were not gonna replicate England anymore. And the settlers had the guns and sheer concentrated numbers, so this whole thing started off being rude and violent.
As the colonies grew, they got tired of the Crown’s mess, so that drove them even further to create their own culture that wasn’t British, which is why they hated the Tories because the Tories loved tea at noon, beans with every meal, terrible food, and other things generally British.
But, through it all, white American culture did get established. White people wrote the history books and laws, and the land-owning men put themselves at the top of the heap and demanded that everyone else conform to their standard so that they’d feel more comfortable. This culture is also known as “American” culture.
Even the bird is White. I’m kidding.
This makes me angry, because if British culture wasn’t let go of and White Americans didn’t have to essentially make it up as they went along (like Black slaves had to), White Americans might not be so quick to steal from black culture and other cultures and try to make things from those cultures their own, diluting them and getting things wrong. Louisiana held on to French culture (buildings, art, etc.) and still won’t let it go. White people, you have a lot to be proud of. Here are some of your contributions to America from your culture:
- Light Bulb
- Record Player
- Telephone
- Industries (oil, rail, steel, agriculture)
- Baseball
- Golf
- Tennis
- Skiing (well, borrowed from the Scandinavians, but still…)
- Basketball (It started out White)
- Many inventions in the U.S.
- Most monuments and buildings (Hey, Freemasons)
- Parks Preservation
- Folk music
- Alternative/Acid/Hard(er) Rock & Roll
- Fashion
- Anheuser-Busch
- The Waltz
- Lutefisk
- The Goonies
- The Barrymores
- The majority of what we consider good television and great cinema
- Eminem and Vanilla Ice
- Being stuck up over something stupid like wine
Globally, white people have done a lot of good things to help the world, the Renaissance being one of them. There’s such a rich culture and heritage in Europe that extends to America, if you’d just let it. You don’t have to co-opt twerking, the Harlem Shake, rap, and rock and roll, when you have ballet, interpretive dance, Emily Dickinson, and Mozart to draw upon. You’re not boring!
Do you know how many minorities want to be like you?! Boring people don’t have followers. There are so many black people (thankfully, I’m not one of them…anymore) who try to emulate your speech patters, clothing styles, and stereotypical interests. They’re fighting a losing battle at trying to make you more comfortable with them, but they try so very hard. I’m done apologizing for being me, so more power to them, but yeah. They really try hard.
I ain’t doing that anymore, but y’all can have at it.
My bloodline stops when I hit “Slave – boy/Slave – girl” with no name given to them. My DNA test depressingly showed that I have commonalities with people in places with not one solitary noteworthy person such as Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, but things pick up steam with Ireland and Panama. (Could I have been part Nigerian at least?!) You have great cultures from which you descend. You can actually trace your people back to somewhere in Europe. I cannot do that.
You don’t have to take from other cultures, make it your own version, and then call it the same thing because you “understand” it now that it looks/acts/walks/talks just like you. It’s no longer cultural at that point. (Hello to all gentrifiers in DC, NYC, Baltimore, and [soon-to-be] Detroit!) Appreciating is one thing. Co-opting, overtaking, profiting from, ruining, and ultimately destroying is akin to some of the worst barbaric human behavior – cultural genocide.
So, this isn’t really about twerking. It’s not about accusing a group of people of cultural theft. It’s really about taking pride in what you’ve done, where you come from, and enjoying that you can do it because not everyone has that luxury. (Just don’t get all first-people-to-settle-in-North-America-WHITE-POWER about it because we won’t roll over this time and dominating others out of fear isn’t the business anymore. We won’t take it lightly, you will be stopped, and MY PRES-I-DENT IS BLACK!)
Be proud, White people! You’re swell.
