“It’s War.”

feminoonas:

So, Angry K-pop Fan got an Ask in concerns with the beginning of MBLAQ’s song “It’s War” containing a snippet of a Malcom X speech, the question being whether or not the usage was appropriate. Angry K-pop Fan, while being bothered by the usage of the quote but not knowing completely how to answer, posed the question for followers to write a response.

So to answer: HELL NO.

From white boys using Nelson Mandela quotes to try to derail people from calling them out for their gross racism, to white middle class socialists twisting a Frederick Douglass speech to make it about (more white-friendly) class oppression when it was actually about anti-United States nationalism and black enslavement, there is a long and offensive history of non-black people taking out of context, twisting, misconstruing, and appropriating racialized black radical language and rage for their own benefit, a privilege black folks themselves are hardly allowed to have, given how often civil rights and radical leaders have been ignored, erased, discredited, murdered, or unjustly thrown to rot in prisons.

In comparison, “It’s War” and MBLAQ’s music in general, is far, far from radical or serious in the least. “It’s War” is another typical k-pop concept with love and guns and the girl perpetually being the object, the possession, the target, the catalyst of male aggression and machismo.* Which OK, not the deepest of subject matter sure, but that’s just fine. It’s fun to listen and dance to, the concept is strong & aesthetically really pleasing, and the MBLAQ boys are fine as hell and are obviously talented performers. That’s what Kpop is all about and they should stick to that**. What brings it to another totally-not-cool level is when there’s such blatant appropriation of a quote of this nature solely for a boy band hit single.

Now, are these quotes and people’s works completely off bounds? Not at all. The thing is, it all depends on the context and the people saying it. POC referring to radical anti-racist efforts have every right to be quoting a radical anti-racists, for example.

There’s even a place for usage in pop music. There is a huge difference between say, a hip hop group like Dead Prez using Malcom X quotes in the beginning of a song, and a pop group like MBLAQ doing so. Dead Prez is are an independent, radical, political, anti-white supremacy/Western hegemony & Imperialism African American hip hop duo who hone & create their own music and MBLAQ is a Korean boy band who merely perform and sing concepts and songs created for them, songs and concepts of the most topical, vapid, and inane nature.

Again, it isn’t that I don’t like fun and mindless pop songs. Obviously, I do. I just know there has to be a level of self-realization, acknowledgement, and respect coming from aesthetics-driven, radio hit-making, chart-topping, trend-focused & driven acts and genres.

If a Western artist of equal frivolity or pop culture status as MBLAQ did this, I’d be just as uncomfortable with it. Though, given Kpop’s track record with horribly disrespecting, exotifiying, and appropriating African American culture, I can’t help but feel even more personally affronted and bothered by it.

-Admin Briana

*Tired, basic, sexist concept much?

**Except for that sexism stuff. That can stop, too.

“

You know, maybe it’s unfair but I honestly just read “I don’t care for hip hop” as code for “I’m super racist but I know it’s bad to be racist so I’m going to be racist in a way that nobody will notice”.

Honestly, you’re going to tell me that there is nothing in the genre of Hip-Hop that you enjoy? That’s fucking bullshit.

”

Literally, IRL.: Dear well-meaning friends who email me to check in during my internet breaks:

 Cause its true

(via blackamazon)

i will not have those people in my life.

(via popca)

ayup. To all of this.

(via note-a-bear)

(via sanaa-tamir)

I know she doesn’t specifically want to be Korean but…

oppacalypse:

koreaboostories:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_mx8pfbq9w&feature=related

(submitted by: Jerkinskittles)

saw the title and face palmed so hard

white girl, please sit down forever

That girl, oh my god. SO fucking ignorant yet so unbelievably adorable. How can you want to simultaneously slap someone and cradle them in your arms.

But speaking of general tokenizing, after I watched this I clicked on a video called “Analyzing Asian Stereotypes” (which wasn’t nuanced or insightful at all but d00d’s fine) and these are the two highest-rated comments:

e______e

(via oppacalyptic)

lusts:

The MLK that’s never quoted.

and it’s no accident that this segment is conveniently left out of our education

The white-washing of MLK jr. and the civil rights movement on a whole to make history look kindly upon white folk and convince POC of the disempowering lie that is “Be polite, nice, & don’t challenge us & you’ll get your rights” is one that disgusts me to no end.

(Source: samljackson)

I am charging everyone to sign this petition.

todiedreaming:

todiedreaming:

We have 92 266 304 signatures, we need 500.

This is not exclusive to black people or kpop fans; is this a stand against the perpetuation of stereotypes and constant racial insensitivity South Korean media displays despite the many complaints it has received form international fans.

This is our chance to fully introduce SK media with the reason why blackface is wrong with it’s history in hopes to stop them from using it as a means of entertainment.

A summation of what happened:

On December 31st, SNL Korea aired a skit that featured blackface. Seoulbeats.com has addressed the issue here:

http://seoulbeats.com/2012/01/snl-korea-thinks-blackface-is-funny-im-not-laughing/

and advised us international fans to tell SNL Korea why that was insensitive and wrong.

So let’s do that. This is our chance to perhaps bring to the table the conversation why blackface IS NOT FUNNY and if South Korea wants to be taken seriously as a global power in entertainment (or in anything) they need understand why it’s wrong.

So here is what you need to do:

Tweet @seoulbeats asking them to promote our petition, reblog this, and sign it yourself.

http://www.change.org/petitions/south-korean-entertainment-cable-station-address-the-issue-of-the-blackface-skit-that-was-shown-on-snlkorea

You have to initiate the change you want to see.

So let’s go get ‘em. 

C’mon we are so close!!

(via rasmalaiwin)

“It’s a cultural thing!”

TW for talk of domestic abuse, racism, Western exceptionalism, culture, traditionalism 

Whenever I hear people, POC or otherwise, say things like “Oh hey this is how we/they do it where we/they come from, *insert hokey traditional cultural jargon and talk here*!” in support of gendered domestic abuse, regressive patriarchal norms in intimate or family relationships, spanking (which often has such a fine blurred line between actual positive parenting & abuse and oppressive parent-children relationships that I don’t even see the good in it at all), and other forms of negative oppressive inter-cultural gendered relationship dynamics, my BLOOD boils.

Do you know how many girls from non-Western cultural or traditional homes get discriminated against, maligned, abused, mistreated, slut-shamed, victim-blamed, and killed all under the name of “this is how we do it here”?

Do you know how that alienates us within our own cultures, usually the only place of respite we truly know, especially for those of us who are from immigrant families?

Do you know how the various powerful and all-encompassing institutions in those lands will ignore or pardon the abuse that happens to us because “LOL brown/yellow/black folks doing what they do, let them be, it’s a cultural thing”?

Do you know how we struggle to try to bridge the gap between culture and progress, between taking care of ourselves and keeping our identity?

Do you know how hard we fight to keep off Western assimilationist forces that appropriate our struggles in faux concern so as to spit on and destroy our cultures and use our suffering as fodder to come in and force “democracy” and white “feminism” down our throats, cold and slick like the barrel of a gun, because we obviously are too tribal, too animal, too ignorant to do any better for ourselves, “it’s a cultural thing!” ?

Think about that shit for a second before you say “it’s a cultural thing” again.

brogigayo:

makeoutwithmblaq:

Lauren Lunde, one of the three babies that will be starring on season five of KBS Hello Baby with MBLAQ! She was born in May 2008 to a Korean mother and Canadian father. How precious! ♥

this has got to be the most ridiculous sentence i’ve ever typed but it’d be really nice if a mixed race baby that wasn’t part white could get some attention in korea

Not ridiculous at all, I’ve been thinking the exact same thing recently. It’s really cheap and shitty how in the SK entertainment industry try to sell white + East Asian mix as “diversity” and can’t understand the colorist and still problematic racist elements behind doing so. So long as you’re pale, everything is A-OK!