There has been lots of esiscussion, as of late, about cultural appropriation and whether or not all this swapping and borrowing is just a matter of showing appreciation or exploiting the culture of less privileged groups.
Usually, these conversations revolve around Whiteness appropriating Blackness. More recently, Miley Cyrus, Macklemore, Iggy Azalea or the White people behind Thug Kitchen. But I do want to throw something out here for consideration: and that is the possibility that appropriation can happen even within the same culture.
What I’m mostly talking about is the usage of colloquialisms, euphemisms and other language identifiers used and created mostly by those born and bred in largely Black and poor enclaves, being co-opted by other Black folks with no immediate connections to those communities.
More directly, I’m talking about Bougie Black People. As Damon Young from Very Smart Brothas once comically wrote about this normally conservative branch of Blackness:
“When no regular Blacks are around, though, BBP’s overcompensation results in them pretending to be ratchet. They wouldn’t dare recite the lyrics to “Pop That” or put Frank’s Hot Sauce on their sushi while regular Blacks are within a 50 to 100 yard radius. But, if you attended a BBP game night or co-ed kickball game disguised as a Bougie Black Person (Docksides, tapered jeans, and a witty t-shirt), you’d witness pseudo ratchetness.”
Some might dismiss this as a silly musing, considering that we are all Black people. And as such, we can’t steal from one another. But while it is true that we all share the same skin color, we don’t all have the same burden.
As Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson noted in his book, Disintergration: Splintering of Black America: culturally the Black community is pretty fragmented. More specifically, he argues that the community has four main segments: the mainstream middle class, which is pretty much invested in traditional mainstream American values; a small transcendent elite who have the “power to make White folks genuflect; a growing number of African immigrants and biracial people with less historical connection to American Blackness; and “the abandoned” which are a large and expanding underclass concentrated in the inner cities and depressed pockets of the rural South.
According to Robinson, the split began over 40 years ago at the end of the Civil Rights Movement. And he points to desegregation, affirmative action and urban decay at the root of this division. He also writes:
“These four black Americas are increasingly distinct, separated by demography, geography, and psychology. They have different profiles, different mindsets, different hopes, fears, and dreams. There are times and places where we all still come back together—on the increasingly rare occasions when we feel lumped together, defined, and threatened solely on the basis of skin color, usually involving some high-profile instance of bald-faced discrimination or injustice; and in venues like “urban” or black-oriented radio, which serves as a kind of speed-of-light grapevine. More and more, however, we lead separate lives.”
He also writes that these distinct “nations” have, at times, antagonistic relationships with one another. In particular, noting:
“The Mainstream tend to doubt the authenticity of the Emergent, but they’re usually too polite, or too politically correct, to say so out loud. The Abandoned accuse the Emergent—the immigrant segment, at least—of moving into abandoned neighborhoods and using the locals as mere stepping-stones. The immigrant Emergent, with their intact families and long-range mindset, ridicule the Abandoned for being their own worst enemies. The Mainstream bemoan the plight of the Abandoned—but express their deep concern from a distance. The Transcendent, to steal the old line about Boston society, speak only to God; they are idolized by the Mainstream and the Emergent for the obstacles they have overcome, and by the Abandoned for the shiny things they own. Mainstream, Emergent, and Transcendent all lock their car doors when they drive through an Abandoned neighborhood. They think the Abandoned don’t hear the disrespectful thunk of the locks; they’re wrong.”
It’s a very compelling theory, which I have personally seen play out, on occasion, in the real world. For instance, those Black folks among the Mainstream, the Transcendent and even the Emergent classes who watch reality television featuring largely “ratchet” or “Abandoned” Black women. The Mainstream and crew might use the Abandoned’s catch phrases, fashion-sense and even certain mannerisms, but won’t actually associate with those “Abandoned” women in any other regard.
Some may argue that the Mainstream and other segments of the Black community use the Abandoned’s cultural identifiers mainly in jest or to be ironic and colorful. And somehow that makes it okay. Likewise, those segments are right to disassociate from the image of the Abandoned because it hurts us all, particularly under the White gaze. But what about the Abandoned who actually embody those characteristics? They have to bare the brunt of burdens from the words the Mainstream, and other segments of Blackness, use in jest.
In a Guardian UK story about White people appropriating the word “bae,” linguist Jane H. Hill explains language appropriation:
“As Hill claims, language appropriation is further problematic because it gives dominant groups control over the language. Dominant groups get to decide, for example, when and if certain words are worth appropriation, when and how the words should be used, and then when the word becomes cliché, overused and therefore passé. And often in the process, as happened with “bae”, the dominant group ends up changing the meaning or pronunciation of words entirely.”
And it is the Abandoned who benefits least when words are mined, (for both economy and validity), by the Mainstream and other segments of Blackness and ultimately stolen (and further commercialized) by Whiteness. I’m not trying to shame anybody because I don’t believe most people, who engage in this sort of appropriating, do so with malicious intent. Still, I want us all to think about some “thangs.” Mainly the idea that there are certain privileges, which we can exercise even among people who look like us.
