Our Culture Is Not Your Clout: A Word for the Culture Vultures

You love our lips, hips, slang, and drip—but not the lives we live to birth it.

Let’s clear this up real quick.
Being Black in America is not your aesthetic.
It’s not a trend. It’s not a soundbite. It’s not a dance challenge. It’s a birthright forged in fire.

Every time we speak up about cultural theft, there’s some academic or influencer talking about how “we’re all one people,” or “culture is meant to be shared.” Funny how that sharing only ever benefits people who don’t look like us. Funny how we can create the whole vibe—and still get locked out the room when it’s time to sign the checks.

Here’s the truth you don’t want to hear:
Black American culture is global currency.
And you’re rich off it, while we’re still grieving what we lost to create it.

We’re not the same.
Some of y’all come from nations that still got aunties back home, last names with meaning, land you can trace. Meanwhile, we got erased—names, gods, tongues, all of it. And out of that loss, we made culture. We made sound. We made survival look good.

So no, you don’t get to pull from our archive and pretend you’re just "celebrating" us. That’s not love. That’s convenience.
You want our flavor without our fight.

And when we push back? Suddenly, we’re the “angry ones,” “gatekeepers,” “dividing the diaspora.”
Nah. You’re just mad we clocked you.

Because here’s what it really is:
We’ve always been the origin, never the afterthought.
We’ve always been the source, even when the world called us “ghetto” for it.
We’ve always been the creators—while others got famous mimicking our pain with none of the consequences.

So if you’re gonna pull from our culture?
Pull up with reverence. With credit. With your mouth closed and your ears open.

Because this ain’t cosplay.
This is bloodline.