All I Want for Christmas is for White People to Stop KILLIN My Culture!
Understand that when you utter words rooted in BLACK CULTURE, you are cosplayin in the BLACK EXPERIENCE.
That aint ok.
What YOU may view as "fun" is actually a means to dilute and cheapen well-cultivated modes of self-expression.
When I was a teenager, only the HARDEST of em used the phrase that has now been shortened to "AF"--I'm talkin car jackers, drug dealers, gangstas...Now you got suburban soccer moms wearin shirts that say "Coffee AF". (Unfortunately, I saw that in real life, smh.) That don't even make sense!
White people: most of the time when y'all "borrow" (I use that term lightly, considering y'all history of "borrowing" cultures/people/countries) Black vernacular, you not only use it WRONG (because, again, Black language is rooted in the collective Black EXPERIENCE), but you literally aid in the death of the word/phrase that you've pillaged from our PLIGHT.
What every Black American knows is that once white America gets a hold of something, it aint COOL no mo because it aint BLACK no mo.
The story of the Native American peace pipe is relevant here. I read in a museum how many Native American rituals and sacred objects were essentially cheapened by their white colonizers, who, in seeing the objects being used in exclusive rituals--yet being completely ignorant to the fact that what they were witnessing were not everyday objects nor daily occurrences-- quickly appropriated them, causing said objects and rituals to lose their holiness, and by proxy, their POWER. The white colonizers would request (or demand!) that the Native American elders light their peace pipes during so many social gatherings and occasions that would not have normally warranted their lighting that the Native Americans, themselves, unknowingly became complicit in the dilution of their OWN sacred practices.
Lest y'all forget, YOUR ancestors made the collective decision to abandon your individual ethnicities (i.e. Irish, British, Dutch, etc.) and create a new, all-encompassing "white" identity so that you could aggregate, concentrate and wield all the power within the fragile membrane of said "white" identity, and main control over BLACK people in America. Y'ALL PEOPLE DID THAT. With that being said, in the game of LIFE you do NOT get to both "all-powerful" oppressor AND purveyor of hip, Black culture. You just don't. You don't get to be a cool/fashionable oppressor. Rather than SHARE the Earth's resources, Y'ALL ANCESTORS chose to rape, plunder and pillage. That is the price of whiteness in America, whether you wanna pay it or not. Similarly, I don't get to choose whether or not my Black skin is perceived as a threat by non-Black people, nor the consequences that come along with that. These are the rules of the game that your white forefathers created.
If you don't like it, then HELP US CHANGE IT. If you wanna be an "ally" then be an "ally" but STOP APPROPRIATING MY LANGUAGE AND STOP KILLIN MY CULTURE!!