“Black like this, but not like that”

“Either they don’t know, don’t show, or don’t care about what’s going on in the hood.” – Doughboy, Boyz in the Hood

Sexxy Red has got to be one of the most polarizing artists that I’ve seen in a very long time. The self-crowned “Hood Hottest Princess” has been causing tons of controversy due to her overtly sexual lyrics, her unapologetic vocabulary, her raunchy gestures and her open and unabashed pride of the hood that has embraced her. However, I noticed something very peculiar. As she has grown in popularity, I’ve seen so much virtue signaling, think pieces, and continued complaints about her antics and how are so unbecoming of women. All the while, those same folks levying those critiques are the same ones shaking their asses, dancing and bobbing their heads in the club to her music. She is a symbol of something that isn’t brought up often in the black community that I will highlight here: the cultural appropriation of black people from the hood by black people from the suburbs/county.

I know what you’re thinking, “wtf are you talking about? Black people can’t culturally appropriate from our own culture. That makes 0 sense. You must be an agent or enjoy butter biscuits for massa”. To all of that I say, “shut yo ass up and listen with your simple minded, hardheaded ass.” This didn’t start with Big Sexxy. We have seen this enacted time and time again with gang culture as it became more mainstream. With trap culture as it became more mainstream. You have folks using terms like “on 4 nem”, “slide”, “plug”, and many, many others while ignoring the very real circumstances, and potential consequences, that came with the lingo. You had folks wanting to dress like Jeezy, to speak like T.I, to feel powerful like 50, to be a kingpin like Jay, to be from the gutter like Gucci, from the comfort of their plush suburban household tucked far away from the warzones that this music was borne from. As the music became more and more popular, a peculiar thing started happening. These same folks started to not only steal the lingo, the fashion and aesthetic of people from the hood, they also began to manufacture a cognitive dissonance between black people from the hood and themselves. They began to “other” their own people. You started hearing, “well, I’m not like those black people from the hood that have no home training. I have some sense”. Hell, some of y’all started spewing that same bootstrap/do better/respectability rhetoric to them, which is insane because you know the “why” behind their circumstances. You started treating them like they were somehow lesser than you and Sexxy Red is the latest example of this elitist attitude rearing its ugly head.

The questions that I have are simple:

Why can’t folks from the hood celebrate the mainstream success of one of their own?

Why do they not deserve an example of who they are and where they come from showcased?

Why is your image of blackness the only acceptable image of blackness, even when those who don’t come where you come from can’t see themselves in that image?

Why do you feel entitled to appropriate a culture that you have never experienced, from a sect of black people that you reject, just to ridicule them for their circumstances or behaviors when you know the “why”?

These people are just as smart and capable as you, but circumstances and environment have stifled their outcomes. They are also aware that a lot of you feel that you’re better than them. That’s why you come into conflict with them because due to their honed street smarts, they can quickly pick up on fakeness in the midst and if someone is playing in their faces. It’s not that hood people don’t like you. It’s that they peeped game and rejected your inauthenticity at the door.

Look, I understand that imagery is important, and you don’t want the image of blackness to be looked down upon. You want our collective perception to be changed and shifted. However, this ideal shouldn’t come at the expense of one of our own no matter their origin. Also, I don’t know if you thought of this but…motherfuckers are racist. It wouldn’t matter if we had the image of a black family all in suits and Victorian dresses being knighted by the queen and canonized by the pope, they look at all of us as one big nigga. Ask yourself, “who are you trying to appeal to?”, “why are you trying to appeal to them?”, “are they people that you should be appealing to?”.

In the meantime, get over yourself. Any revolution that you think is required for our collective liberation WILL NEED THOSE SAME FOLKS TO PARTICIPATE! So, don’t shun your people. Either embrace our collective differences and bridge that gap so we can be a more unified community or shut the fuck up and mind your fucking business.

You ain’t gotta like it, but the hood gon love it.

TCI