I know what’s insane about this whole rag on the white Australian breakdancing Olympic girl who’s going viral because her dancing was just horrible, horrendous, just bad. And people are wondering how in the world did she get selected to be in the Olympics? How in the world is she representing Australia? And I’m here to say from my very limited experience dealing with Australians, it is very on brand. That type of audacity, that type of mediocre performance is on brand. Why I say that, right? Okay, I take you back to a story time. And this is very much generalizing and stereotyping. And you know, Australians might say, hey, hey, hey, don’t let those two experiences make you typecast our entire country. We are better than that. And they’re well within their rights to say that. But I remember I had this brief and well-said to this Australian dude, right? And he was talking about how he just loves rap music. He was like, ah, rap is just such a big deal. We have rap in Australia. And one of my biggest things is how rap music in Australia just doesn’t get bigged up enough and European rap doesn’t get bigged up enough. He was going around this whole round. And he wasn’t even talking drill, okay? He wasn’t even talking drill, okay? He’s talking about some shit I’ve never heard of that I don’t care. I don’t give an heck. I don’t care to look it up. I don’t care to look for it. And I was like, well, yeah, rap is curated from Black American culture. And so we get into this dialogue about that. And he’s heavy on the end of like, well, that was like a long time ago and it shouldn’t matter and like a lot of other people do rap and a lot of people do it in a different way. I’m like, regardless how other people around the globe do rap, you do rap because you were inspired by African American rappers who curated this entire genre. This genre was literally birthed by Black people in America. Black people who have a history of enslavement within the United States of America. That’s where it came from. We get into this back and forth where he’s pretty much being like, I just hate that like American supremacy and da da da da da da da da da. And also being that anti-Black in a way. And mind you, this man has like Moroccan ancestry and was like, oh, I’m a part of, I’m not, I don’t really classify myself as African. We classify ourselves as Middle Easterners, which was a other conversation that we got into. Anyways, so he continues to be like, nah, you know, it’s just like, it’s just music and like our music is good and like our rap, it doesn’t have anything really to do with like American culture. I’m like, no, no, don’t even say American culture. Don’t even, don’t, no. And here’s why I know your rap is rubbish. And here’s why I don’t want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. Because if you are going to claim to really appreciate anything, anything in the way that you are doing, you’re trying to be like, oh yeah, like my, our music is amazing. We just love rap. Like rap is so important to us. If you’re going to claim to love anything with that level of them, but then have a level of disdain for the origin of the art that you claim so much to love. I know you know absolutely nothing about the art that you claim to love. I know that you are just the product of colonialism. I know that the white men did a damn good job of making the rest of the world just hate black Americans. I know they’ve succeeded well because this is insane. So when I saw that mediocre white woman playing with break dancing, again, another art form that literally originates from black folks within America. And this one is like you have Caribbean influences, you have Latin American, Latin immigrants, and then you have your black Americans. Like break dancing comes from the Bronx. Break dancing is very, very, very black. Here we are now, years later, where mind you, things like break dancing were like policed. Kids in New York neighborhoods used to literally get arrested, their functions used to be canceled, their dance sets used to be literally policed. Now we’re on this huge international stage where the way I had to go digging to watch videos to actually see black people doing break dancing at the Olympics. Because I was like, why am I not seeing anybody black? I’m confused. And this is not even no tea, no shade to the Asian community. Because one thing I will say about the Asians, one thing I will say about the Asians, the reason why when Asians pick something up, they eat, because them people go study it. I literally last semester when I was, because I’m a media master’s major at NYU, and last two semesters ago I was in a class where we were talking about international media. And one of my classmates did music from the Caribbean. And she talked about a whole subsection where she’s like, yeah, like, like Chinese folks really fuck with Caribbean music. Like she’s talking about all these Asian cultures that really like be deep in their Caribbean back. I had no idea. She’s like, yeah, like they really be like into it. Like they really be studying it. Like they’ll pull up to the Caribbean. Like there’s also the history of like Caribbean folks being, I mean, Chinese people being in the Caribbean. But she like did this whole thing where she’s like, yeah, it’s a big deal. And I remember I went to a party out in Brooklyn and I saw a bunch of like Asian kids at this Afro-Caribbean function. And I was like, what are they doing here? But they was really there for the get down and they was really throwing it back. Like we was throwing it back. That’s why I said one thing about Asians, Asians gonna study. They’re gonna do their homework. They’re gonna master something. They’re gonna give props where it’s due. They’re gonna dissect it. They’re gonna eat it up. They’re gonna break it up. They’re gonna tear it apart. Did the black people do this? And I can’t be mad at that. I can’t because you at least you’re putting respect on it. I can’t be mad at that. But from the conversation I had with that man where he was like, F black Americans and their creation of rap. Like we have rap here. And from seeing this white woman, I said, it’s giving Australians just like to pick shit up. They just like to pick shit up and they don’t they don’t care about history. They don’t care about really understanding where these things come from. They don’t care about really studying. They just like to pick shit up with the audacity. The audacity of whiteness. Yeah, I just had to have to let that one off my chest. So yeah, this is for me. My two experiences is giving on brand. It’s giving on brand. It’s giving. I hate to see it. It’s giving the colonizers did their thing because yeah, and that’s why we talk about white mediocrity. There it is. There it is. There it is. Because how in the hell did you were you allowed to even get on that stage? And then for the coach to come on and be like, oh, I think it’s just a gender bias like they’re attacking. No, no, no. She sucks. And it’s watching how far white privilege will get you. Because what in the absolute hell the fact that I didn’t even see enough black people. And I kid you not, I can go to a function right now. In the Bronx, in Harlem, in Brooklyn. And I will see my people doing their biggest big ones. I will see the Latin folks doing their biggest big ones. I barely saw my people. I had to go digging for it. Y’all not even promoting them like y’all promoting these mediocre white folks. I’m sick.