For the majority culture, for "white" culture, looking Black in some way, through contrived means, is fun and cool. BEING BLACK, naturally and overwhelmingly, down to the life-experience ALL Black people share in some measure (not a monolith of experience but a multitude created by centuries of white supremacy) ... that's not fun and cool. That's a reminder of how we all got here that most white people don't want to think about with any depth. Nor see written about, apparently, based on replies like yours, that imply that a Black person writing from their life-experience is not "careful and compassionate," because you don't like a truth that isn't your own. Because it talks honestly, experientially, about women whose lives have been made more of a struggle by women who look like you.
(Please, remember, that a hit dog gonna holler. If this article wasn't about you, you wouldn't have responded so defensively with a "#NotAllWhitePeople" flail. Have you asked YOURSELF why, and answered honestly? Have you asked members of your multiracial family their thoughts on your response to this article? Will you allow THEM to be honest with YOU? I mean this literally, as well as rhetorically.)
Black women don't "appropriate" "white" culture, but are oppressed by it and immersed in it. It's a poison that must be imbibed to survive, even as it kills. For instance, Black women didn't start relaxing their hair or bleaching their skin because it was fun and a better look for THEM, but because it was the best way to ... keep jobs. To keep men. To be considered acceptable, never mind desirable. To keep societal favor, such as that was. Thus, to compare a minority's assimilation for survival's sake and to thrive, to a majority culture's wanting to look exotic and different WITHOUT paying the majority-enforced dues of being born that way--living the struggle that comes with those lips, that hair, that ass, that SKIN, is ignoring the original cause of forced and necessary assimilation. Black women have been told for centuries, explicitly and implicitly, that everything about them isn't as good or as beautiful as whatever a white women is or has. Both Black and white women, the whole WORLD has swallowed this white supremacist poison. To survive and even to simply be left alone, means, even to this day, conforming to white supremacists standards--especially when it comes to anti-Blackness.
The differences between what is clearly the results of oppression, devaluation, and dehumanization ... and what is shaving off the surface bits of another culture and ethnicity. The fact that you don't address that or won't is telling. If you wish to ignore the inciting factor of centuries of white supremacy, the history that bloomed around it, and the continuing destruction it causes ... continue to do so. That, also, sounds about white. But anyone who ignores that is a disingenuous sympathizer who is not inclined to have a good faith discussion, such as they often claim to want. As you are proving and proving, with every: "Yes, I see what you feel, BUT ... here's why that shouldn't and doesn't matter to me more than [FILL IN THE BLANK WITH WHITE SUPREMACIST NONSENSE]."
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being underpinning of your premise, your refusal to take historical and current fact and reliable anecdote into account is meant only to divert and culpability-shift. You are conveniently ignoring the REASONS behind what various people do when it suits you. You are looking at the result and detaching it from the cause, and the human beings who suffer harm. You are doing this to give your argument weight and to give white women who do the same as you cover and plausible deniability. Clearly, it's not working, because in reply to this article and others you're hollering like you've BEEN getting hit. You're arguing from bad faith premises when you bother with an argument at all. Not to mention, you're using about seventy billion logical fallacies (including Texas Sharpshooter, Slothful Induction, Correlation/Causation, Argument from Personal Incredulity, No True Scotsman, and leaning HARD into Tu Quo Que ... and not using any of them subtly or well).
Your intentions are as transparent as your argument is boring and played-out, but continue going off, queen, and good luck with that. We both know that speechifying on Beyoncé's Internet doesn't change minds or hearts ... only the owners of those minds and hearts can do that. I wish I believed you were capable of a genuine desire to understand and empathize with HUMAN BEINGS who happen to not have your life-experience. I wish you were capable of an honest, open heart, but ... #NotAllWhitePeople.
