I've actually rolled around in bed and fumed about this post I saw for about a month straight so I'm vauging about it.
A trans positivity account that I really respected before this and seemingly has a decent following (based on the average engement on their posts) made a random anti-punk post that if you actually know punk history seems pretty fucking anti-Black. Every time I think about this it makes me so angry that I can't keep up with my thoughts but if I don't talk about it I feel like I'm going to explode. That being said : I'm really sorry if this post is a bit of a word salad and you can absolutly ask me for clarification on the things in this post.
Essentially the post was trying to be like 'hippies good, punks bad' and it kind of implied that a lot of credit for the punk sub-culture should go to white supremists that are anti-government. First of all, the first punk band was an all Black band called DEATH so I find it disingenuous to give credit to racist punk bands for creating the sub-culture. Second of all, I have to assume they're talking about bone-heads/naziskins so now I have to explain some stuff. In short : og skinheads were people from Britain who really enjoyed Jamaican immigrant culture (especially their style and music) and if accounts from that time are to be belived it was common for skinheads to beat the shit out of racists who gave these immigrents a hard time. Uhm, and then a bunch of white-supremisists stole the look and sound of skinhead culture which, again, is pretty much just a celebration of the culture of Jamaicans that immigrated to Britain. Today, there are plenty of sub-cultures of skinheads that are very inspired and motivated by this history (ex : SHARPs/Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) but sadly, this movement has mostly been sucessfully co-opted by these white supremeisists. Of course, I understand how this mix up happens and don't see this as common knowledge but when also put into the context of them doing a 'hippies versus punks' um... yeah, I wonder if they know that reggae (y'know which is part of the Jamaican immigrant culture that contributed to and even to an extant intertwined with punk culture) while being part of hippie culture was also the ground work for a lot of early punk and is still considered part of the sub-culture. Like, it just feels like this person was only thinking about white hippies and white punks while making this post even though it's meant to encapsulate these sub-cultures as a whole which maybe I'm looking too much into but that would be pretty racist especially when the music generes and sub-generes for these sub-cultures (reggae, dirty reggae, ska, and punk) were intially created by Black people!
And yeah, at first I thought I was looking too much into it but then they reblogged that post pretty much saying that 'they wish more people knew punk history' (even though from what I can tell they don't seem to know punk history very well) and that 'hippies are anti-violence' (which I'm pretty sure they just meant anti-war which I think most punks are on account of being against opression) 'while punks want to violently over take the government' and, like, yeah...? Of course we want to not be opressed. The whole point of punk is that we're mad that about opression and we need to fight against opression! Did you think we would just give up when peaceful means didn't work? Also, they seemed to be against violence even when it's against opressors for being opressors and all I'm going to say about that is that they probably would've been anti-John Brown which is definitly a red flag to me and with that context I feel like I was in fact not looking too much into it.
Anygay, if your a punk and/or a hippie go listen to some punk and/or reggae music made by people of color, especially Black people. Here are some recs if you need help getting started :
For reggae I highly recommend Symarip/The Pyramids (they went by a lot of names over the years but you'll probably find them by the name Symarip). This band was a Jamaican immigrant reggae band that has now broken up but not for anything too crazy. (If you've ever heard the song Skinhead Girl that was them and it was based on one of the members' girlfriend who's still a skinhead and as far as I know the two are still together.) My two favorite songs from them are Phoenix Reggae and Skinhead Moonstomp. (I would like to add on that pretty much all of the music you'll find of theirs is recording from concerts.)
For that punk sound I really recommend The Muslims. They're an all Black all Muslim punk band. I have so many favorite songs by them that it is super hard to pick (seriously, if you want more recs for them I'd love to give you some) but I've been obsessed with GCDC here recently.
If you want a mix of both reggae and that typical punk sound I really recommend JER/Skatune Network. They're by a Black non-binary one-person band (they know how to play so, so many instuments) in the studio but they do now have a band for concerts. (I would also like to note that Jer uses they/them.) There is also a lot of ska and rap elements in a lot of their music. (Skatune Network is mostly where they post covers while JER is the name their origional music is under.) The have an amazing Killing in The Name Of cover on Skatune Network but I love love looove their orgional music. There are so many good songs to pick from but right now my favorites have to be Capitalism Breeds Devastation, You Got Yr ----- Card Revoked!, and Another Unity Song.
If you like JER/Skatune Networks music because of how many layers of sound it has I think you'll really like the band 1876. Thy're an all Indiginous-American punk band. My favprite song is ++DGAF++ but We Don't Run is a close second.
