This Poem Explains Why You Need To ‘Hide Your Shea Butter’ From White People
This might be the most lit account of cultural appropriation ever. In the video below, poets Crystal Valentine and Aaliyah Jihad serve all the realness with “Hide Your Shea Butter,” a piece about the ways that white people continue to steal Blackness and Black Culture for their own ends.
In the poem performed at the 2016 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational, Valentine and Jihad make a powerful case for Black folx, Black women in particular, to protect their Blackness, keeping it safe from white surveillance and potential thievery. At one point, the two say: “I don’t care how fly your twistout is, don’t you dare that sh*t out in front of no white woman.”
[Related: Poet Beautifully Details Black Women’s Struggles At PWIs]
In another moment, they called out 2015’s most notorious cultural appropriator by name, saying: “It’s that Rachel Dolezal stole 14 Black years and we have yet to retrieve them. Do you know how many white years that adds up to? This b*tch supposed to be 87.”
The two address the popularity of hairstyles like crochet braids (which Valentine herself is rocking in the video). They talk about the ways that bantu knots have been called “mini buns” and how some white people even think that sleeping with a Black person gives them a special entrance into Blackness. Clue: it doesn’t.
Toward the end of the performance, the two sum up their concerns saying: “It’s not that we don’t trust white people, it’s that y’all really think my Black looks better on you.” They suggest that it is time for white people to be creative on their own. What do you think?
Watch the full poem below (Warning: language):
Photo: YouTube screenshot
Hey now, ease off. If white people see a good thing, they get all excited and want everyone to know about it.
I don’t know about the past, beyond our fake candy coated history. But I don’t see white people take credit for black things.
I’m sorry about slavery being the way for “us” to meet and meld. It would be a boring place the Spaniards invaded, then England sent all the prisoners here. It was not fun for the white man at first either. Heck, it still isn’t a guaranteed foot in in life.
Stealing is a pretty large claim. And not a very nice thing to say. Nor is it a thinking process that is conducive to us uniting. There are way less black hating white people these days.
Not sayin prejudice isn’t alive and well. But we have to let go of our old thinking and keeping ourselves separated from one another. Because my black girls in my world have taughtt me more than any white person. They’ve also had my back during times white people do not stick together. So please know we use things from each other and we must dissolve the lines made wider by mentality such as these girls. It not just them. I sympathize. But look at a bigger picture.
Sorry if 8ve angered anyone. Not my intention at all.
Thank you!