{"id":72690,"date":"2021-08-09T05:39:50","date_gmt":"2021-08-09T05:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thefastfashion.com\/?p=72690"},"modified":"2021-08-09T05:39:50","modified_gmt":"2021-08-09T05:39:50","slug":"disney-pop-star-accused-profiting-off-black-slang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thefastfashion.com\/?p=72690","title":{"rendered":"Disney pop star accused of profiting off Black slang"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Teen pop star Olivia Rodrigo is the latest non-Black celebrity to face criticism for speaking in a \u201cblaccent\u201d and using AAVE (African American vernacular English), who joins others in being called out for the same offense \u2014 including Billie Eilish, Iggy Azalea, Ariana Grande and Awkwafina (and her\u00a0<em>Crazy Rich Asians\u00a0<\/em>character Peik Lin).<\/p>\n<p>In a controversial video mashup, resurfaced last week, Rodrigo, who is Filipina-American, speaks in a way that is commonly known as Black vernacular, using forced phrases like \u201cI be trending,\u201d \u201cAF\u201d and \u201cy\u2019all,\u201d sparking accusations of cultural appropriation.<\/p>\n<div class=\"e3lan e3lan-in-post1\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"box shadow  \"><div class=\"box-inner-block\"><i class=\"fa tie-shortcode-boxicon\"><\/i>\n\t\t\t\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">olivia rodrigo constantly uses AAVE and it is pissing me off. the blaccent\u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/R3RmcFdjs0\">pic.twitter.com\/R3RmcFdjs0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 GiGi (@beytilldawn) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/beytilldawn\/status\/1420466512343838720?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 28, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>\n<p>Rodrigo has not publicly addressed the criticism, and a request for comment by Yahoo Life to Rodrigo\u2019s publicist did not receive a response.<\/p>\n<p>Still, some fans stood up for the teen, wondering if she really deserved such criticism for using slang like a \u201cregular kid.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Deandre A. Miles-Hercules, a doctoral student in linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara calls such defenses \u201cvery tired and predictable,\u201d noting that people say, \u201c\u2018She\u2019s not hurting anybody\u2026\u2019 but in a society with such stark economic and social inequality \u2026 to be creating wealth by using Black language and culture is reprehensible \u2014 and it is meaningful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s that economic divide, say many experts, that\u2019s at the heart of why appropriating language \u2014 or fashion or music or hairstyles or anything else \u2014 is problematic.<\/p>\n<p>Still, Miles-Hercules says, the Rodrigo situation is \u201calmost a non-event,\u201d because \u201cthis is so common and so old and so tired that it didn\u2019t register to me as surprising or anything. It is what I\u2019ve come to expect to see. I think of language and culture as inseparable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Part of the problem is how people discuss such instances of appropriation \u2014 being reactive, case by case, rather than looking at the systemic inequalities behind the issue, the researcher and many others say.<\/p>\n\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t find there to be a sophisticated debate about cultural appropriation in the media,\u201d British critic and writer Afua Hirsch told George Chesterton\u00a0in a\u00a0<em>GQ UK<\/em>\u00a0in a September 2020 story prompted by Adele being photographed in a Jamaica-flag bikini and bantu knots. \u201cIt\u2019s less the act and more the ignorance behind it that is the issue,\u201d Chesterton wrote, further quoting Hirsch, who said, \u201cI\u2019m often asked to come on TV whenever a pop star wears cornrows and defend the idea that I would like to police their hairstyle. There is little interest in the broader picture of imperial racism and white supremacy that forms the context. So it ends up being a reductive conversation about whether it\u2019s OK for white people to do something, which is not my business.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Miles-Hercules (who uses they\/them pronouns) echoes that, noting, \u201cI\u2019m very rarely interested in the individual, but more in the structural level, because racial inequality is rarely individual.\u201d As an example, they point to platforms like TikTok, \u201cwhere they\u2019re actually censoring Black content and boosting white content that\u2019s being stolen.\u201d Due to those types of inequalities, they say, \u201cWe have to step in on a structural level.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>What is a \u201cblaccent\u201d?<\/h2>\n<p>Miles-Hercules says it is \u201ca register of speech that appropriates features of what gets called African-American English, or Ebonics, often at a syntax or grammar level. It\u2019s rarely appropriated by rhythm or intonation because those are the hardest to acquire.\u201d So, when someone says something sounds \u201ccringey\u201d (as with Rodrigo), they add, \u201cI think what they\u2019re attuning to is a rhythm that sounds very foreign, or not native\u2026 It sounds just kind of off\u2026 They kind of throw in this word or grammar into what, otherwise, is like a white, relatively standard kind of accent\u2026 so cherry-picking individual features to sound cool.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSliding in and out of a grammar that speeds past certain consonants, utilizes the habitual \u2018be,\u2019 and takes on a twang with\u00a0<em>dank<\/em>s and\u00a0<em>struggle<\/em>s aplenty, Awkwafina has inspired the resurrection of that dreaded portmanteau reserved for non-Black people with Black voices, hardly seen since Iggy Azalea could claim song of the summer: blaccent,\u201d she wrote. \u201cPeik Lin\u2019s flirtation with Black vernacular, along with the character\u2019s general swagger, clinches the case, and another buzzword enters the frame: appropriation, a word that now commonly connotes knowing, cultural theft.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When its usage is wrong, Jackson noted, it\u2019s \u201ca feeling, an informed suspicion better felt in the bones than cross-referenced with a grammarian, not because Black languages lack their own grammar, but because, so writes linguist J.L. Dillard in the landmark 1972 study\u00a0<em>Black English<\/em>, \u2018We could diagram Black English, but we would know no more about it afterward than we did before.\u2019 Either you know, or you don\u2019t.\u201d Still, she pointed out, it\u2019s complicated.<\/p>\n<div class=\"e3lan e3lan-in-post2\"><p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong><em>Adv<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bagfactory.com.hk\/216\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>Sun Winning Ind Co<\/strong><\/span><\/a>: Manufacture of Canvas Bag, Recycle Bad in China<\/li>\r\n \t<li><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theunitravel.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">TheUniTravel.com<\/a><\/strong><\/span> : Find the latest\u00a0<em>travel<\/em>\u00a0and tourism\u00a0<em>news<\/em>\u00a0from around the world. Stay informed with\u00a0<em>travel news<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>updates<\/em><\/li>\r\n \t\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cA certain millennial cool-kid identity is already predicated on basic appropriations that get overlooked when every case becomes exemplary, instead of evidentiary,\u201d she wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s all very messy, and power makes it messy, but treating the blaccent as something authentically Black and stolen doesn\u2019t make it any clearer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Even less clear, notes a\u00a0<em>Guardian<\/em>\u00a0story\u00a0about Riley Keough\u2019s character in the new film\u00a0<em>Zola,<\/em>\u00a0are Hollywood portrayals of characters with blaccents. \u201cLiteral blackface is (now) a very obvious form of racist appropriation, but when it comes to linguistics, it is more difficult to know where to draw the line,\u201d explains the piece. \u201cThe two used to go hand-in-hand, but African-American Vernacular English, to give it its formal term, is constantly feeding into mainstream (aka historically white) language. It is often the place where the cool words come from \u2013 including \u2018cool\u2019 itself (flashback to\u00a0<em>In the Cut\u00a0<\/em>where Meg Ryan meets with a Black student to get the latest slang words hot off the street). Appropriation is often called out in music (e.g.,\u00a0Iggy Azalea) but in film it\u2019s less clear cut.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But of course, as Jackson noted in\u00a0an NPR interview, \u201cCultural appropriation cannot stop. It won\u2019t stop. It\u2019s more about the general circulation of things. And unfortunately, we live in a world where the general circulation of things is incredibly racist and incredibly anti-Black.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>The bottom-line problem: Economics<\/h2>\n<p>Sure, it\u2019s messy. But because the problem is systemic, many point out that the biggest issue is that it leads the appropriators to profit off of language that can actually be disadvantageous for those to whom it\u2019s native.<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s something that folks like Rodrigo appear to understand, as evidenced, Miles-Hercules says, by the fact that she understands when a blaccent brings \u201ccool points\u201d and when it\u2019s \u201cnot appropriate to use,\u201d such as on\u00a0a recent trip to the White House\u00a0to encourage youth vaccinations. So the excuse that someone didn\u2019t know language is appropriated is \u201cBS.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIgnorance related to that is abdication of responsibility,\u201d Miles-Hercules adds. \u201cNot only is it nonsense, I think it\u2019s intentional, it\u2019s cultural amnesia, and it\u2019s part of how racism and white supremacy function \u2014 by forgetting things do have roots behind them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The point is, notes\u00a0<a class=\"link rapid-noclick-resp\" href=\"https:\/\/www.babbel.com\/en\/magazine\/cultural-appropriation-drag-slang-aave\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-ylk=\"slk:a piece in Babbel\" data-rapid_p=\"23\" data-v9y=\"1\">a piece in\u00a0<em>Babbel<\/em><\/a>, \u201cAAVE, when used by African-American people, is often associated with \u2018undesirable\u2019 parts of society like poverty, drugs, violence and gangs. But when corporations or white people use it, they are co-opting its \u2018cool\u2019 potential for their own gain \u2014 and giving nothing back to the community that created it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Miles-Hercules points out that this is \u201cpervasive,\u201d and that when we talk about what needs to change, \u201cit\u2019s less about policing the language of Billie Eilish or Macklemore but more about making sure, at a structural level, that Black artists are compensated not only on parity with the white artist but are benefiting in a meaningful way \u2014 in a way that the structure allows.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Pop culture, they add, is often treated as an \u201cagnostic concept, but it\u2019s not,\u201d explaining that things are popular, culturally, \u201cbecause people put a lot of money behind them\u2026 If we trace this history, on one hand, you see where you go when want something very, very popular: You see what the Black people are doing \u2014 then repackage it, make it white and sell it back to white kids in a way their parents will accept.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Teen pop star Olivia Rodrigo is the latest non-Black celebrity to face criticism for speaking in a \u201cblaccent\u201d and using AAVE (African American vernacular English), who joins others in being called out for the same offense \u2014 including Billie Eilish, Iggy Azalea, Ariana Grande and Awkwafina (and her\u00a0Crazy Rich Asians\u00a0character Peik Lin). In a controversial &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72484,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[611],"tags":[3852,4733],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.7.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Disney pop star accused of profiting off Black slang - TheFastFashion.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thefastfashion.com\/?p=72690\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Disney pop star accused of profiting off Black slang - TheFastFashion.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Teen pop star Olivia Rodrigo is the latest non-Black celebrity to face criticism for speaking in a \u201cblaccent\u201d and using AAVE (African American vernacular English), who joins others in being called out for the same offense \u2014 including Billie Eilish, Iggy Azalea, Ariana Grande and Awkwafina (and her\u00a0Crazy Rich Asians\u00a0character Peik Lin). 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