Maria’s Art Blog

Ariana Grande is darkening her skin and changing her features to look Racially Ambiguous to sell to a wider audience and it needs to be addressed

Black people, who invented hip-hop, jazz, and rock and roll, have long been tastemakers of American cool. In many ways, fashion, music, and slang are dictated by black people no matter how little credit they get for it..

In fact:

“Our research shows that black consumer choices have a ‘cool factor’ that has created a halo effect, influencing not just consumers of color but the mainstream as well,” said Cheryl Grace, senior vice president of U.S. Strategic Community Alliances and Consumer Engagement, Nielsen.

Thus, presumably, if you want to be cool and sell records, you ought to start acting black. In fact, it’s great if you’re not black and act black because you get the benefits of being cool without the baggage and limitations of being subjected to racism.

Its what the Kardashians, Iggy, Justin Bieber, Ariana, and alot of other celebrities do in order to rise in popularity as well as be accepted into the black community.

  Grande’s music is largely influenced by hip-hop and R&B, meaning that in order to build a fanbase, she needs to court listeners (ahem, black folk) with those musical preferences. Grande, who is quick to shut down any perceptions about her ethnicity being anything but Italian. Most people presume Grande is Latinx, not necessarily black, when mistaking her race, but I am here to tell you, most Latinos are part black, sis. 

Thus, for years, Latinx women have been sounding the alarm: Grande is doing brown face. Look at her tan!! Look at how she speaks! Look at her music!

The point is: Most of us don’t get to pick and choose which parts of blackness we get to have — only white folks seem to have that luxury. And we need to give her the SAME ENERGY we give the kardashians.

Source

The plan for the 17th, when the adult content ban comes in, is to protest.

To do that, we are making as much noise either side of the 17th as possible, and using the site as normal.

On the 17th, dead silence.

People are saying log off but what they really mean is don’t open the site or the app.

But, on the 17th make as much noise as possible on every other platform. Tweet about it and post on facebook and instagram and everywhere else.

What this does is causes a massive dip in ad revenue for one single day. That does not make staff think ‘oh everyone’s gone let’s shut down.’ What it actually makes them think is ‘oh shit people aren’t happy and if people don’t keep using our site we’re out of money and out of jobs.’

A boycott reminds a company that the users (consumers) have the power to make their site (business) worthless with one single coordinated decision.

If you want to join in, here’s what to do:

Do:

Close all open instances of the app and site on all your devices before the 17th

Make posts before and after the 17th on tumblr and other platforms, talking about why this ban is bad

Make posts on other sites during the 17th. Flood the official tumblr staff twitter and facebook with your anger and your opinion

Come back on the 18th and check in

Don’t:

Delete the app from your phone (this doesn’t affect their revenue and since it’s off the store at the moment it’ll be hard to get back)

Delete your account. I mean you can if you want to, but if you keep your account and don’t use it you’re saying to staff that there’s still time to save it. If you delete it’s hard work to come back.

Open the app or website (including specific blogs)

Make any posts (turn down/off your queue and make sure nothing is scheduled)

Go quiet elsewhere. Make it clear that this is just about tumblr, not a mass move away from all social media.

Remember: the execs don’t care about anything but money. Shutting down the site means there’s $0 further income from it. That’s their last possible course of action. If we make it clear we’re not happy, they’ll have to do something or we can do more and more until it becomes too expensive.

read the full comic here!