So so true. That I suppose is the real irony, seeing black American culture appropriated globally and then attacking it while using it. He should have sent a thank you tweet or a hallmark card:
“Dear black Americans, thank you for you great creativity in all the arts and displaying it to the world. You’ve given the world culture, from the invention of “cool” during the birth of Jazz with Miles and Bird, which was appropriated happily not just by whites in America but in France, Sweden, Japan. They over there learned to relax, go with the flow, chill. They needed it as they were pretty uptight.
You also gave the world Blues, which somehow made its expressive escape the suffering under the sunshine of Mississippi Delta to wind its way up into Chicago, and float over to a record player in England where Mick and Kieth listened and studied its magic to infuse into their rock in the sixties. The world then rolled with those Stones.
Your language expressions have been widely co-opted even in Korea, though perhaps watered down, and infused themselves into British and South African English, even into French. Your hip hop and rap have also been imitated, and now there is even Russian and Chinese rap. It is not just the style and language youth in particular like in the music but they like the subversive stance and strength behind it. There is something about it that is defiant, that says, I won’t be repressed. That attitude learned “the hard way” by you over in America is sorely needed in these repressive countries.
The soulful voice and sound of black women has also been copied because black American women has survived the hardest trials that history has thrown at them and yet somehow managed live through singing spirituals filled with a beauty and came through.
I’ve gone beyond my tweet limit, black Americans, but there is more you have given us out here in the world, from actors, to styles, from peanut butter to art, even to science by calculating the orbits that helped put men on the moon.
Dear black Americans, please keep overcoming the repressive and nasty vitriol hurled against you by those on the internet, aptly named “trolls”, to produce more beauty, art, expressions and science. Because the world out here needs it, needs you.
From your friends everywhere, The World.”
See, it’s not that hard to honestly and non-ironically express gratitude and recognize the good in others, is it?
