My rant on the racialization of rap music
I really enjoy SoCal rap. I'm a little white girl from a predominantly white, upper middle class town in NorCal, but I love it. I really identify with the struggles and the culture, and I'm tired of people saying "Oh yeah guys, Lauren thinks she's ratchet now." It pisses me off that people are also saying this with a negative connotation. Why is ratchet a bad thing? Why does it have a bad connotation?
Secondly, I don't claim I'm ratchet. I don't care if someone calls me that, because I don't perceive it as a bad thing, it's just that I don't want to be like Miley Cyrus and seem like I'm trying to take a culture and use it to give me some sort of street cred. Miley uses it as a way to make money, and she disrespects the ratchet culture with the way that she disrespects the black female body by using it as a prop to compare herself to, and also with the way she took twerking and used that as another way to gain credit. I'm not trying to racialize the ratchet culture, but I do think that Miley is disrespectful and I don't want to be compared to her. However, I also understand that she is trying to break away from her disney, little girl persona, I just think she is doing it in a disrespectful way.
I enjoy that genre of music, and I will sternly correct you if you make fun of me for identifying with music that directly relates to my life, and my music taste. Fuck anyone who uses my race as a reason for why I should not like rap, and especially FUCK ANYONE who claims that rap is a "black person thing"that's racist and stupid.
