Mainstream publications getting their coverage of black culture wrong is about as common as Miley Cyrus referencing marijuana or Donald Trump saying something self-aggrandizing—but it never stops being frustrating. So when Elle Canada decided to label the dashiki "the newest it-item of note,” black people across Twitter did the ceremonial clapback.
First, there was righteous anger. Then came the jokes. After that, others chimed in, adding more fury and funny to the conversation. It’s a familiar cycle because lately, it seems not a day goes by without a media outlet getting something wrong about black culture.
Even before Elle diminished the history of the dashiki, a colorful garment commonly worn in West Africa, there was problematic mainstream discussion of the term “fuck boy.” Popularized by rapper Cam’ron, it’s a way to mock a man’s masculinity and describe him as weak. But when Vanity Fair tried to define the term in a recent piece about Tinder, the black community went up in arms.
Doing her best Carrie Bradshaw impersonation, writer Nancy Jo Sales, defined a fuck boy as “a young man who sleeps with women without any intention of having a relationship with them or perhaps even walking them to the door post-sex.”
Although she notes that “the word has been around for at least a decade with different meanings,” Sales is guilty of the same sin as Elle. She references fuck boy, taken from black culture, and speaks of its importance only in terms of its relevance to white people. To wit, Sales admits that “it’s only in about the last year that it has become so frequently used by women and girls to refer to their hookups.”
As Jezebel’s Kara Brown correctly asserted, “You don’t get to change the meaning of words because all your white friends are using it incorrectly. This isn’t the evolution of language—it is an outright hijacking. And the fact that these people think they have any right to do so is white privilege of the highest order.”
There is a right way to report on a culture you aren’t part of, though.
not a day goes by without a media outlet getting something wrong about black culture.
Take for instance a Fusion piece titled, “‘Netflix and chill’: the complete history of a viral sex catchphrase.” In it, Kevin Roose thoughtfully and carefully chronicles a phrase that recently took off by including attributions to its originators—black people—and also describes how it managed to gain mainstream popularity. Roose achieves all of this by 1) knowing his history and 2) not changing history. Imagine that.
But such examples are unfortunately rare.
In fact, it probably won’t be long before dookie braids are reported as “new trends” in white spaces, meeting the same fate as baby hair and bantu knots. I’m certain that some black teen’s ingenious Vine or Snapchat post shared this week will, in two years, reemerge as a white creation—much like what happened to "fuck boy" and “squad goals.”
And I’ll be just as annoyed then as I am now.
What’s most grating about this is that the Internet is supposed to make us more connected than ever, yet many media outlets still seem to be cluelessly trapped inside their lily-white bubbles. In reality, the Internet has only fast-tracked a longstanding trend of cultural erasure.
To safeguard against this, any worthwhile publication covering culture should have a diverse staff—because you can’t write about us thoughtfully if you don’t bother having any of us around.
