Squad. Squadgoals. Whatever you want to call it, it has recently taken over the white world. Yes, the white world. Before researching the topic for this post, I was ready to defend a certain celebrity (you know which one) without even realising what I was trying to defend. What I was going to blindly defend was the unintentional, but still deeply damaging, use of cultural appropriation.
I had originally planned to write this piece along the lines of saying 'why Squadism isn't damaging, but rather the way the media portrays it', but I have realised it goes much deeper.
The roots of #squad, I discovered, lie in the culture of young black people creating a self made family to stay strong in a world still plagued by oppression - racism, sexism, classism - and to survive in a very much white man's world. I had the privilege to be ignorant to this subject, but I am so glad I took the time to read up on it because even the most simplest things to me have a deep rooted history in a culture that I am not a part of, and a culture that was (and still is) oppressed by my culture. By partaking in the use of #Squadgoals without understanding where it came from or how the overhaul by white people has affected the original use, I was inadvertently taking part in cultural appropriation.
And while I don't think that the use of #squadgoals will or can stop, it is so important for people to understand the words they use. Taking something that's been done in black culture for years and making it 'mainstream' (code for 'white') is something that is happening increasingly in social media today and needs to stop - or at the least people need to take the time to understand and appreciate, not appropriate
So, do you think #SquadGoals is damaging, or empowering?
I had originally planned to write this piece along the lines of saying 'why Squadism isn't damaging, but rather the way the media portrays it', but I have realised it goes much deeper.
The roots of #squad, I discovered, lie in the culture of young black people creating a self made family to stay strong in a world still plagued by oppression - racism, sexism, classism - and to survive in a very much white man's world. I had the privilege to be ignorant to this subject, but I am so glad I took the time to read up on it because even the most simplest things to me have a deep rooted history in a culture that I am not a part of, and a culture that was (and still is) oppressed by my culture. By partaking in the use of #Squadgoals without understanding where it came from or how the overhaul by white people has affected the original use, I was inadvertently taking part in cultural appropriation.
And while I don't think that the use of #squadgoals will or can stop, it is so important for people to understand the words they use. Taking something that's been done in black culture for years and making it 'mainstream' (code for 'white') is something that is happening increasingly in social media today and needs to stop - or at the least people need to take the time to understand and appreciate, not appropriate
So, do you think #SquadGoals is damaging, or empowering?
