I loved reading this! The author said a lot of points that I agreed with, especially when she talks about black people in white spaces. Carmen Kynard, the author of “Black Digital-Cultural Imaginations: Black Visuality and Aesthetic Refuge in the M4BL Classroom” speaks on points of changing of young black people in white spaces. Kynard speaks about a time when everybody was wearing their jeans backwards to send tribute to Kriss Kross. Now the reason I bring this up is because later Kynard says, “When it comes to style, embodiment, and visuality, young Black people will literally make you hurt yourself riding out with your pants on backwards; they start it, and the world follows.”
Cultural Appropriation Vs. Appreciation
This point was one of the first things that caught my attention, because it’s true. There are many times were POC (People of Color) more specifically black people create something or make something that others find cool; the whole world will follow. Kynard talks about cultural appropriation at the beginning of her essay. This is what I think happens when people aren’t respectful about the things that they follow. Everyone in my opinion has the right to be interested in someone else’s culture as long as they are respectful about the culture they are observing and/or participating in. But that does not stand if you try to take something from another culture and use it as a fashion statement or just another hair style without looking up what it could mean.
An example I could give personally is when people wearing braids that black people usually wear. I do not have a problem with people wearing braids if they aren’t black. I do have a problem with when they wear braids and their whole personality changes to match them. When people start doing blackccents and start “acting like a black person,” that is when there is a problem. Because now you aren’t just wearing them and still acting like yourself. You are wearing the braid like a costume and not actually appreciating the culture.
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