Tag Archives: White people

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Racism, Appropriation, and The Harlem Shake

If you aren’t familiar with the Harlem Shake craze that is sweeping the internet, you may have been under a rock for the past week or two.

I’ll let Know Your Meme explain it to you:

Harlem Shake

“Harlem Shake”, not to be confused with the hip hop dance style, is the title of a 2012 heavy bass instrumental track produced by Baauer. In February 2013, the song spawned a series of dance videos that begin with a masked individual dancing alone in a group before suddenly cutting to a wild dance party featuring the entire group.

It all started with this video:

Now there are countless takes on the meme:

The strange thing about this meme is that not a single person in any of the videos seems to actually be doing the Harlem Shake:

And while it all seems like just a bunch of bizarre fun, not everyone feels that way.

The REAL Harlem Shake

Though you wouldn’t know it from the meme, the actual dance known as the Harlem Shake is not where one shakes around as if she or he is having a seizure while humping things and wearing a silly costume.  It is part of the rich tradition of dance and the arts in Harlem.  Dating back to 1981 and drawing upon an Ethiopian dance called the Eskista, the Harlem Shake has long been a staple of hip hop dance in this predominantly African American section of New York.

And some of the folks in Harlem aren’t too happy about the meme:

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4 Reasons White People Can’t Use the N-Word (No Matter What Black Folks are Doing)

White people don’t like being told that stuff’s off limits to us.

At least that’s my theory for why this question is still being asked:

White Person: ”If Black people can just throw the N-word around all the time, why is it not okay for White people to use that word?”

So in as concise a way as possible, I want to answer this question as clearly as I can for all the White people still asking it.

4 Reasons White People Can’t Use the N-Word (No Matter What Black Folks are Doing)

1.  We lost the privilege.  You know that whole, you know, 600 year time period when White people were buying and selling Black people as chattel?  Well, remember how that whole system was enforced by a violent system of repression whereby Black slaves who did not act the way the White folks wanted them to were beaten and murdered?  Oh, and remember that time after slavery when Black people were locked in a system called Jim Crow that used a similar fear of violence and repression to keep Black people in “their place?”  Well, in the midst of all that shit, there was a word invented by White people as a pejorative for Black folks.  It was used just about every time a Black person was whipped, chained, beaten, insulted, spit upon, raped, lynched, or otherwise humiliated and mistreated by White folks.

Thus, I don’t care how much White folks want to use that word.  I don’t care how unfair you think it is that someone else gets to use it when we don’t.  Our people gave up the privilege to use that word the moment we invented it as a tool of oppression.

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Are White Students Being Disadvantaged by Affirmative Action?

I notice that whenever I can do question and answer sessions with young people (high school and college students), the same questions come up every time.  First, a White Man usually asks why Black folks are allowed to use the “n word” but he’s not (read my response here).  Then a White young person usually asks, “How do you feel about Affirmative Action? Because from what I understand, White people (particularly White Men) are actually now at a disadvantage in college admissions because of Affirmative Action, and it’s not fair that I will have less of a chance of getting into college because of what happened in the past!”

Ask any White person how they feel about Affirmative Action, and you’re almost guaranteed to hear that it is “racist against White people” and that it is “unfair” or “reverse discrimination” and that they oppose it.  Further, most White folks will tell you that they are, in fact, actually less likely to get a job or a position in a school than a Person of Color because of Affirmative Action policies.

This is not true. Not only are White people not being discriminated against actively, White people are still benefitting regularly from a system that was built from its inception by White people for White people.

You see, White folks will often tell me, “White people make up 72% of the American population, but they only make up 62% of those admitted and enrolled in degree-granting institutions.”  And the tricky part of that statement is that it is not false, not in the slightest.  It is, however, wildly misleading.

The Demographics of Success

Demographics are tricky.  In the United States today, there are A LOT of older White people.  Simultaneously, though, there are also A LOT of younger People of Color.  Thus, while the percentage of the American public that are White hovers around 70%, the percentage of traditionally college-aged folks is much lower: 59.7%.  The critics are right, though, that 62.3% of those enrolled in degree-inferring institutions are White.

Race % of Pop. 15-24 % of Enrolled
White 59.7% 62.3%
Hispanic 18.3% 12.5%
Black 15.6% 14.3%
Asian 3.5% 6.5%
Indigenous 1.5% 1.0%

Source for Population Demographic data, 2009.
Source for College Enrollment data, 2009.

White folks are STILL disproportionately likely to go to college despite formal Affirmative Action programs that attempt to recruit students of color.  Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous students are disproportionately less likely to go to college, and the only other group with college-going rates that exceed their percentage of the population are Asian students.  But even that is misleading because to understand Asian success in the United States is also to understand racism.  After all, due to the Chinese Exclusion Act and similar policies that even continue today, for most of U.S. history, it was virtually impossible for someone of Asian decent to legally immigrate to the United States unless they had an advanced degree.  Thus, there is a disproportionate number of folks of Asian decent whose parents are college educated, but when you break down the data by socioeconomic status and ethnicity, low-income Asians are, again, disproportionately less likely to go to college!

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