They call themselves allies until allyship becomes a burden. Until it's not cool or popular. Until no one is watching. Until no one calls them out.
They appreciate our culture until it's deemed weird, foreign, strange. Until they realize there are real people and history behind it. Until it doesn't fit their idea of who we should be. Until it doesn't cater towards their gaze and lenses. They get defensive when we call it problematic, taking it for themselves. They don't acknowledge their privilege to be able to take it on and off our culture without the hate, the discrimination, the minority experience.
They praise themselves for advocacy when it is the bare minimum and don't when we advocate for ourselves. It's a given. It's assumed. And it's an annoyance when we relate everything to it because it's not that deep. It's easy to think so when it doesn't fill your mind every second.
They make their experience the standard. If it's anything outside of it, we're uncultured, uneducated, unsophisticated, and we need to replace our experiences with theirs.
They victimize themselves when opposing views confront their own, saying that they are apart of us. Saying that they didn't know better but then don't do anything to educate themselves. Saying that it is our responsibility to teach them, to baby them.
They get a voice in things they don't fully understand and undermine us.
They say so much and muddle the conversation and bury our voices.
They say their opinion is the only right one.
They say. They say. They say.
I've noticed patterns in pop culture that relate to what I wrote above. Taylor Swift getting off the hook for dating a known racist anti-Semitic shit, then covering it up with a half-assed collab with Ice Spice. American-Kpop group Sorbet cosplaying Asian idols and accents, and then defending their choices because they have a Japanese boyfriend. Celebrities staying silent on what's going on with anti-trans laws until enough people call them out. The people who know everything that's going on right now and choose to ignore it. I'm sick. I'm sick of all of this, and it's hard for me to comprehend specifically audiences in my generation not understanding. Not displaying compassion and empathy. Not just being a decent person. I'm also just tired. I'm tired of having to care more to offset those who don't. I'm tired of being responsible for educating the ignorant people around me. I'm tired of being so concerned when others don't have to be. I'm tired that this is my and many other's reality while it's just a piece of media that others can turn on and off.
I don't really have a conclusion to this all. I just needed to get all of these thoughts out and start a conversation.
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