In Paris in the 1920s, everyone was crazy for Black culture. White bohemian artists and intellectuals collected African art, listened to jazz, and knew all the latest Black dances, like the Charleston. The problem? This admiration for Black culture, called Negrophillia, was often much deeper.
Black artists like Sidney Bechet and Josephine Baker leaned into this appetite for Blackness, and it made their careers. Baker's iconic dance in a banana skirt, played on white fantasies about African ”primitiveness” and exoticism.
Negrophilia would quickly turn into Negrophobia, which psychologist Franz Fanon described in “Black Skin, White Masks” as a neurosis characterized by the fear of Black people. White people’s "love" for Black culture wasn't love at all. It was fetishization, and it continues today.
In the digital world, Black language, dances, and everything in between get stolen and monetized without credit. Offline, this shows up when intracommunal concepts like “wokeness” get co-opted, and their meanings flipped. Although this is frustrating, it isn’t new. It's what a world built on colonization does: steal and oppress for maximum profit.
The system of white supremacy is inherently anti-Black. This was never about love or appreciation. All we can do is keep doing us, publicly. They're going to watch. It's what we do, and what we build, to better Black lives in our private spaces that truly matters.