Africanization 101
A concept I found that explains things better than most.
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Cultural Africanization is the adoption of signifiers of Black culture by whites, namely that often characterized as ‘ghetto culture’:
Using Black slang, getting dreadlocks or cornrows, wearing bandanas, tight cut-off jeans, and large hoop earrings.
In adopting signifiers of Black culture, white girls are signaling a disdain for our own culture: ‘There’s something wrong with dressing white’ is a hop, and a skip, and jump from ‘There’s something wrong with being white’. And there’s something tantalizingly taboo about that.
As a white girl, engaging in Cultural Africanization is very empowering. You can’t choose your race, but you can choose which race you align yourself with. You can stick it to those white nationalists by actively rejecting your own culture and adopting that of the other tribe, the ultimate Other.
As a white guy, seeing white girls becoming Culturally Africanized is the ultimate emasculation. The white guy and everything he stands for is being rejected. Especially when it’s the signifiers of ‘ghetto’, lower class Black culture, that it’s replaced with. Black culture is better than white culture, the message seems to be.
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Cultural Africanization is the adoption of signifiers of Black culture by whites, namely that often characterized as ‘ghetto culture’:
Using Black slang, getting dreadlocks or cornrows, wearing bandanas, tight cut-off jeans, and large hoop earrings.
In adopting signifiers of Black culture, white girls are signaling a disdain for our own culture: ‘There’s something wrong with dressing white’ is a hop, and a skip, and jump from ‘There’s something wrong with being white’. And there’s something tantalizingly taboo about that.
As a white girl, engaging in Cultural Africanization is very empowering. You can’t choose your race, but you can choose which race you align yourself with. You can stick it to those white nationalists by actively rejecting your own culture and adopting that of the other tribe, the ultimate Other.
As a white guy, seeing white girls becoming Culturally Africanized is the ultimate emasculation. The white guy and everything he stands for is being rejected. Especially when it’s the signifiers of ‘ghetto’, lower class Black culture, that it’s replaced with. Black culture is better than white culture, the message seems to be.
4年前
