by
Black Girl With Long Hair
The awkward moment when your black auntie has used half the words on MTV’s list of hot new slang for 2016…
Perhaps MTV is showing its age, its ‘out-of-touch’-ness, or the shameless cultural appropriation its thrived on for years, but its list of slang for its (largely white) audience to incorporate in 2016 reads like a lazy summary of a Black Twitter conversation from two and a half years ago.
The article, titled, Say Goodbye To ‘On Fleek,’ ‘Basic’ And ‘Squad’ In 2016 And Learn These 10 Words Instead — and let’s just pause here for a second, because I won’t be saying goodbye to any of those words — lists 10 words, including ‘lit’, ‘trash’, ‘drag’, ‘fam’, ‘woke’, ‘high-key’/’low-key’ and ‘live’, that are apparently the phrases to know in 2016. The problem is none of these phrases are new at all.
Lists like this further the notion that African American culture is a free-for-all, a party bag anyone can dip their hand into to pull out something fun. No doubt countless clueless teens (who are reading MTV.com for some reason…) will incorporate these terms to seem funny or cool. But black folks don’t say ‘basic’ or ‘woke’ to be funny or cool. These terms are examples of how dynamic, creative and ever-evolving African American Vernacular English is.
Mainstream America still hasn’t reconciled its dissonant views on ‘Black English’. On the one hand folks who use AAVE are consistently ridiculed for their pronunciation, accents, adherence to different grammar codes and unique given names. On the other hand, AAVE lingo is stolen/appropriated by the mainstream at an alarming rate.
MTV would do better to scrap this list altogether and ask itself why it’s still stealing terms from black folks to seem hip and in touch. Because that is definitely old, shady and corny.
12 Responses
Why is MTV keeping a list like this? I mean really, it’s like grade school vocabulary time during English class: “Ok class, here’s your list of words to learn. Now write them 10 times and use each one in a sentence properly”. Anyone keeping up with slang lists (and writing them for that matter) needs help.
In any case, don’t get angry with Caucasian-focused media outlets. Get angry with the Black extensions of our culture who sell out to these despots, giving them the green light to appropriate. Even suburban born and raised NWA had a target audience of over 90% Caucasians youths and young adults. Why? That’s where the money is. We may feel our culture isn’t for sale, but the entertainers that stem from our community have placed our culture on a scaffold, auctioning it to the highest bidder. They capitalize, the whites get a new fetish to exploit, and the rest of us are still emotionally, physically, and psychologically tortured by the rest of world for being who we are. Reigning in our community and creating solidarity among our members can go a long way toward protecting that which we hold so dear.
I truly appreciate cultural awareness. White washing our culture is never okay.
But, can we please get hair growth and health tips, style options and style icons once a week? I miss the old BGLH, I appreciate the renovations, but I would still like a taste of the old often.
Has this BGLH site been SOLD? It seems to have went in content in another direction. Which is fine, however, the site name seems to contradict the content
I really did enjoy information on haircare. It seem BGLH has moved on to other interest, perhaps some of us long for the “good old hair days” should too.
Nope! I can assure you BGLH has not been sold! We still will cover black hair but like this post states we’re expanding to cover more in black womanhood and black culture as a whole: https://bglh-marketplace.com/2015/06/bglh-is-changing-and-its-a-beautiful-thing/
I don’t want to give up just yet, lol.
I already left NecoleBitchie when it became XONECOLE and started releasing pseudo thought pieces. That still took me a while to get over.
Unreal and lol at the same damn time.
They going take #DoBetter too. Watch out.
This truly annoyed me. I already go to a white school and have to grit my teeth every time a white boy says “hype”. Now are they gonna start saying “woke” too? It’s irritating when people don’t recognize your culture as your culture ?
It will kill me the moment they start saying woke.
As a white guy, I hate when other people start using black lingo too. It’s like they’re tryna be something they’re not.
It’s a shame! We get teased for not talking properly then they “take” it. When will get along?
Ugh, cultural appropriation at its finest.