#globalcitizen

kiyang w., macU

[fallingin2me]

Black culture and ‘internet slang’

The internet is becoming a main actor in the hybridization of culture worldwide. We have never been able to share ideas and connect across borders in this form: instant and easy. However, with this intensified worldliness comes issues with cultural appropriation. Cultural artifacts are misused and misrepresented all across the globe, all because someone saw it online and thought it was cool. This is prevalent in the discussions surrounding the appropriation of Black culture on social media.

Have you ever noticed that a lot of people use a certain voice or specific mannerisms when trying to be funny? There’s nothing wrong with a little dramatization for effect, but the problem lies in when these actions appropriate and bastardize the culture of a marginalized group. For a lot of non-Black people, African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and other Black dialects are synonymous with ‘internet slang’. You see Black people tweeting, using words you’ve never heard before, and you think it’s the norm for online etiquette. This is the problem with the hybridization of internet culture. People fail to realize that Black people talk like that in real life, and it’s not just a funny internet persona; they get called unintelligent and unprofessional for speaking that way. This is an example of how the context of cultural items is lost in internet spaces. Non-Black people will then go on to turn AAVE into a joke and get tired of it after a while, never understanding the meaning behind their words nor the intricacies of the dialects they appropriate. This further marginalizes Black people. The racist undertones of this type of behavior is not lost on us. To me, it feels like people put on a mask online, using Black dialects to look cool, and then take it off when they log out, never experiencing the struggles of actually being Black. I’ve heard people describe this phenomenon as ‘digital blackface’ or ‘digital minstrelsy’. This shows how the impact of hybridization and appropriation on the internet has the power to isolate people, even in our growing interconnectedness.

[fallingin2me]

COVID-19 and its impact on women

Fact: Our lives changed about one year ago. I’d been thinking about how much COVID-19 has taken from me in the past year. With a situation like this, I’m hyper-aware of how much my experiences are not unique. And as International Women’s Day approaches, I decided to look into how COVID has impacted women around the world. 

I knew that women have been left in a precarious place due to the upheaval that came with restrictions, lockdowns, and the like. I expected some of what I saw, including statistics that noted how domestic abuse and sexual violence against women have risen due to the pandemic. On the economic side of things, women were faced with three times more hours of unpaid housework than their male counterparts on average. There have been global trends regarding the diversion of resources to reproductive health, including lack of access to contraceptives. It’s sad that another universality of this global pandemic has been the rise of gender-based violence.

The United Nations has stressed the importance of governmental policy making that addresses women’s disadvantages since April 2020. Women make up 70% of the health workforce globally, putting them at higher risk for the virus. In Canada, more than half of all COVID-related deaths have been those of women. 

The economic ‘bounce back’ that so many countries are working towards is an unattainable dream for so many women on a personal level. The way the pandemic brought a halt to our lives has repercussions that disproportionately leave women in poverty, uneducated, and unemployed. 

COVID-19 has reshaped the fight for women’s rights; NGOs have had to essentially re-evaluate their goals in light of the unforeseen events. The pandemic has had paradoxical effects: people are physically farther than ever, and yet the interconnectedness and shared consciousness of this ordeal has fostered a global sense of community and responsibility.

Links: UN statistics COVID & women in Canada

[fallingin2me]

A place in the world just for me?

In high school, I took Korean language and culture classes as an extracurricular for three years. I never would have done that had it not been for my growing awareness and subsequent interest in the cultures around me. I could say that this was the result of digital technology; I got into Korean music, I connected with friends of friends online to get me registered in the course. I could also credit the embodied aspect of it all; I live in Toronto, a city known for its multiculturalism. These are two sides of the globalization coin.

The class was a lot of fun and I made amazing friends and memories. We had monthly workshops, getting to try things like taekwondo and traditional dance and calligraphy. Through winning a Korean speech competition, I was able to go on a scholarship trip to South Korea in 2019. I’m a pretty sentimental person, so I kept everything I could from my time there, which included a bunch of pamphlets and brochures from the places I went.

At almost every place I went, there were brochures in many languages. I was surprised at times at the presence of foreign influences. Sure, I spent some time in big cities like Seoul and Busan, but I remembered the small museums in the more rural towns like Gyeongju, their guides plenty in English, Japanese, Thai, and more. We were able to take part in this culture and share those experiences in a way that is accessible and accommodating to the open nature of the modern world.

I memorably visited a Hyundai Motor Company plant tour in Ulsan. Memorable because I honestly thought it was a bit strange to include a tour of this random MNC on a trip for fourteen to eighteen year olds. We went through the showroom and received presentations about technology and employee benefits. I remember thinking: Why were they basically recruiting us? It was then that I thought about it all (the free cultural workshops in class, the scholarship trips given to kids all around the world) in a new light. I felt like the courses back home cultivated an interest in us to eventually live, study, and work in Korea. I began to think about how cross-cultural exchanges are often done for economic benefits, whether it be through tourism or something like this. The free classes I took was essentially an investment that I would go on to return to Korea as an asset. Now I look back on my experiences and am able to see the process of globalization at work. In my case, a process fueled by cultural and economic interconnectedness. Globalization found its way in recruiting a bunch of kids to want to study at foreign universities, to join a foreign workforce, and to live in the world as a global citizen.