I'm sure you've seen your social media feeds riddled with videos that are meant to be fun and lighthearted of guys or non-black WOC trying to emulate a certain…description of black women that frankly is kind of weird and not really talked about. And I'm not the kind of person to be offended by every single thing I see.
But when are we going to have a discussion about people trying to make black women seem over dramatic and just plain tacky? I know I'm not the only one that has seen this and has been kind of annoyed by it.
Throughout the course of the history of social media, I've seen a lot of black caricatures of women that play them out in a poor or negative light. I've seen grown men wear brightly colored synthetic Party City wigs and speak with a kind of colloquialism that, in the words of Kanye West "...just doesn't sit right in my spirit." It's especially cringey when white men try to act like that.
The most recent occurrence of this is Twitter user Landon Romano, who actually steals his gimmicks from a black comedienne. He pokes his nonexistent butt out and tries to act like the common stereotype of a black girl: loud, rude, always on the phone, wearing flashy clothing, twerking, etc. This is where I kind of get annoyed.
This kind of narrative would be totally fine if it weren't for the double standard that we put on black women to be reserved, unseen, and unheard. If a black girl speaks her mind, she is labeled as "loud" and "angry," if we're using the nicer terms.
As a society, we do not celebrate black women enough. They are often unaccredited with many things in popular culture and in other fields.
You might even label this article as me "being angry." But I'm actually not. I just find it odd that we are nearing the end of 2018 and we're still not giving credit where credit is due. We'll get our day, though.