It’s time for us to sit down and talk about the cultural appropriating, Obama-slamming, racist mess that is Katy Perry. Now, we’ve always known Katy Perry to be problematic, from her casual banter about wanting to skin Japanese people and wear them to her homophobic song “You’re So Gay”, there’s always some receipts lurking in the crevices of the internet just waiting to be pulled out.
Well, I’m pulling them out.
In Perry’s “This is How We Do” music video, she abuses black language, culture, and stereotypes to the point where it’s almost embarrassing to watch. “This is how we do it” is a phrase coined by black R&B singer Montell Jordan’s hit 1995 song of the same name. The phrase eventually became colloquial language in the black community. To top it off she wears green and black cornrows while eating a watermelon (playing the fried chicken and watermelon trope) and praising a picture of Aretha Franklin. If her actions of reclaiming the phrase and the song weren’t enough of her behavior tells the whole story: she’s not appreciating this culture, she appropriating it. Whether or not people like to admit, cultural appropriation is and always will be a form of racism. She doesn’t appreciate culture, she disrespects and stigmatizes it, hurting the people inside of that culture. When has Katy Perry ever said #BlackLivesMatter? When has she ever spoken up for the members of the black community when it wasn’t popular to be woke or convenient? Like the rest of America, she wants the slang, the hair and the culture but she doesn’t want us.
And if that wasn’t enough, she does it again
Besides her blatant cultural appropriation, predominantly of Black and Japanese culture, this year has really not been a good year for Perry in regards to her casual racism. On an Instagram live video a few weeks back, she tells her fans to “get over” the fact that Obama isn’t president anymore, comparing him to her black hair. the amount of disrespect in that sentence alone was embarrassing and uncalled for.
But wait! There’s more!
Mano, Producer of The Weekend and former DJ for Kanye West, recently resurfaced tweets from 2013 when Perry called him and his friends the n-word while they were at a club in Paris.
https://twitter.com/CallMeMano/status/345189386960371714
https://twitter.com/CallMeMano/status/562015824102576131
https://twitter.com/CallMeMano/status/858800592759787520
https://twitter.com/CallMeMano/status/858800965960572930
https://twitter.com/CallMeMano/status/858803591234150400
https://twitter.com/CallMeMano/status/858807155700510722
Katy Perry is a racist, mediocre pop star who gives no regard for black people or the culture. So let this be said:
Dear Katy Perry,
You’re not black — just racist. You will never understand what it’s like to be black in America and no amount of cornrows and watermelon will ever give you the right to disrespect and belittle the black community with your blatant abuse of our culture and our skin. We are not your prop, your costume or your alias. Our culture is not, and never has been, and never will be yours for the taking.
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