Hip Hop and White "Connoisseurs"

I had the distinct displeasure of watching Center Stage 2: Turn it Up or something silly like that. Why did I watch it? Cause I have an inexplicable weakness for dance movies. All of them and any of them. And I couldn't sleep. Anyways, I was watching it, and of course couldn't deal with White Suburban kids "doing" hip-hop cause it "gives me fire" or "makes me feel good". Of course...they all looked like Gumby on Speed when they danced.

But seriously, what is it with White America and the compulsion to blatantly disregard any sort of politics or history when it comes to creative expression? Or...why the heck are white kids always trying to have the best of both worlds? To have the style and the culture, but not the responsibility or the accountability and recognize that they are in fact appropriating? Its insane to me how all of the dance movies I've watched lately deal with white kids being introduced to hip hop and then appropriating the mess out of it to the point where it is not only unrecognizable, but looks downright silly. Another constant plot in the films....mixing or showing the clash between hip-hip and other forms of street dance/performance with ballet. I don't give a crap. Ballet has had a constitutional history or disregarding people of color because of body types, but it is fully acceptable to have white individuals take the power and the politics of hip hop from the streets, dress it up nice and then ballet accepts it with no acknowledgment to the communities that survive because of the dance form? It's not enough to take land, money, culture and bodies, but now dance?

I'm not even going to pretend this is the first time I've registered this appropriation. Cause I have. Maybe I'm so heated cause the acting was ridiculously awful, and the casting directors really couldn't deal with having a black lead who can perform ballet and hip-hop, both with greater precision and style- and so just put a out a casting call to any white female and male ballet dancer who can learn/is a hip hop dancer. And I bet their choreographer was a person of color.

All this said though...I still love dance movies. And they always make me want to get up and shake my booty. But I'll be damned if I see another white kid mimic my moves on the dance floor and not tell me I'm a good dancer. *shrug*



You should click on the song by mc chris. It's funny. I would like to hope he's making fun of white kids like himself who like hip hop but are still clearly white, and double taking on appropriation. But let's hope my optimism doesn't get the best of me.