WFRLL: Antiblackness in the K-pop Industry and its Fandom Spaces (A Masterpost)
Cultural appropriation is not a conversation between cultures. It’s not sharing. It’s not an equal cultural exchange. Turning someone’s culture into a costume actually stops the cultural exchange from happening because now, the people whose culture is being appropriated have to deal with dismissal and dehumanization from the folks doing the appropriating and their fans/supporters. They have to deal with the fact that they don’t have access to the culture of the people appropriating theirs and that their humanity frequently comes under fire by the people putting on their culture. They have to deal with the fact that, at the end of the day, not only are they not respected as arbiters of how their own culture can be shared or how it should be presented, they’re generally… called selfish for trying to have that small bit of control over a very slippery conversation.
