Law School Poster Appropriates Booties, Hurts Feelings

Law students go to the mattresses over a "booty" poster.

An LGBT group at a top law school is having a “neon party” this weekend. Posters promoting the event featured a scantily clad black woman with a pleasing backside. This poster has caused a kerfuffle… and I bet you can guess the law school.

Now, it doesn’t escape the notice of the black community when white gay men appropriate black female culture (or white women who have appropriated black culture) as “mascots.” But black people are pretty used to white people “stealing” their culture. White culture is like the Borg.

That said, there are real, honest-to-God racial issues in this country that need to be addressed. Gay men twerking is not one of them

Here’s the poster that’s been making the rounds at Berkeley Law School:

Really, we’re going to fight over this?

A few students calling themselves “concerned black queer/female Berkeley Law students” published an open letter to the “Queer Caucus” at Berkeley law. Their core points:

Sponsored

* The Poster is an Example of White Use and Abuse of the Black Female Body as an Aberrant, Abhorrent, and Amusing Spectacle Which has a Long and Harmful History of Racism and Sexism

* The Poster is an Example of White Appropriation of Black-Originated Concepts and Arts Forms Which Permeates (White) Popular Culture for the Amusement of White People and to the Detriment of Black People

* The Poster is an Example of the Growing Tendency of White Gay Males to Position Black Women as Mascots for the White Gay Male Experience, A Practice Which Reifies Deadly Stereotypes Wielded Against Black Women

* This Poster Has Personal and Professional Consequences for Your Fellow Black Female Berkeley Classmates and Potential Queer Caucus Members

I don’t necessarily disagree with these points, but the hill we’re going to die on here is twerking? You are black law students at one of the best law schools in the country. We need you to join the struggle. And you’re wasting your time on a booty poster for a neon party thrown by people who like black culture? This is your fight? From the letter:

The rampant white appropriation of the black female body, specifically, speaks to the more widely-known happening of cultural appropriation. But, what exactly are the harms of cultural appropriation in this context? Let’s be clear: twerking, or any form of dancing, doesn’t define black women or their distinct culture(s). Many black women are unable or choose not to twerk. However, it is true that twerking is a distinctly Black innovation.

Of the “distinctly black” cultural innovations, shaking your ass in a hypersexualized manner is the one you want to defend? Where in the f**k is it written that white people aren’t allowed to twerk? How does it advance the cause of black whatever to say that this particular dance move is only the purview of black women, AND THEN BITCH about how twerking doesn’t define black culture (which it doesn’t)?

The letter is full of these not-entirely-helpful defenses of black culture:

Sponsored

For example, while Beyoncé was key in popularizing the term “Bootylicious,” she dare not embody the meaning or image of that word because, well, that would make her a “whore” and an unfit feminist. Even Nicki Minaj herself can’t embody the “twerk” she recently reclaimed from the likes of Miley Cyrus (who columbused the dance and popularized it in White America) without the distinct aftertaste of anti-black, sexist sensationalism of which this poster is one example. These are just a few of the racist, appropriative transgressions of the recent years.

Could we, like, NOT elevate Nicki f**king Minaj to the level of black culture warrior fighting battles against the evil race transgressor Cyrus for control of the booty? You are in law school, you are not on the set of Bring It On Again.

Also, and I don’t want to be overly presumptive here, but you are dealing with the gay law students, not the Confederate law students. Isn’t there a chance you could just, I don’t know, send an email saying “Hey guys, the black girl in a thong squatting on your poster isn’t cool. It’s not like BLSA sends out rave flyers with a guy in chaps holding a gerbil.” Like, I’ve found white gay men to be pretty reasonable when issues of sensitivity are brought to their attention.

Is there a potentially deeper problem with the “Queer Caucus” and gay students of color at Berkeley? The letter’s author seems to think so:

While this behavior may seem shocking to those of us who recognize the radical weight of the word “Queer” (as opposed to LG[sometimes BT]) in the group’s title, black men and women, and other people of color, who have attempted active membership in QC find that the radical (read: anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-ableist, etc.) definition of queer fades soon after our arrival.

To be more clear, in more than one way, the Queer Caucus (QC) at Berkeley Law has reified racist and sexist ideologies in the same way its allegedly less radical counterparts do. For example, 1L year, I, Trevor Burton, was the only openly black, gay man in the 2015 class, which made me quite easy to spot, but no one from the QC reached out to me in any meaningful way to inform me about the group or its membership. I soon discovered that without any black members, they had little occasion to welcome me or the few black queer students at the school.

Okay, at least now we’re talking about something deeper than who gets to dance to Beyoncé. As a columnist, I am out of my depth when it comes to internecine fights between white gay culture and black gay culture and how to integrate the two into a mutually beneficial whole.

Maybe there is a real issue there that needs to be addressed. But this letter conflates a bunch of issues into one incoherent general statement of dismay. Having more diversity within the LGBT group is one thing. The appropriation of black culture is a separate thing. The integration of black women into the Berkeley Law community is another distinct issue. And yet the letter still delves into off-the-rails discussions about who gets to perform various dance moves:

These images, when controlled by the wrong people (here, racially unconscious white men) are harmful to those of us, particularly to black women, who enter the halls of Berkeley Law and other law schools fighting a nearly insurmountable presumption that we do not belong, lack merit, and are ignorant and incompetent. Now, images of bodies like ours and dance forms which first found life in the minds of our sisters, for which we have been defamed, ridiculed, called outside of our names, and punished for performing and merely being associated with, have been stolen, bastardized, and reduced to jokes and posted for the consumption of the privileged white heterosexual men walking the halls of an elite, top-ten law school…

Today, we say, “No more!” We are tired of creating, only to be punished for those creations, then made to watch white society pilfer our creations, pretend they invented them, then profit from their mocking commodification. We are tired of being denied agency and ownership even over our own bodies. Our bodies are ours. Our creations are ours. We demand that if you are to engage and share with us, you must do so respectfully and without reproducing systems of oppression from which you historically and presently benefit to our detriment.

“Our creations are ours”? Umm… black women at Berkeley Law School DID NOT INVENT TWERKING. In fact, acting like twerking can be claimed as part of the intellectual property of all black women is precisely the problem. The concept of twerking — which, again, involves shaking your ass in a fast, dog-humping motion — being “bastardized” in a manner that is non-respectful to the black women of Earth is ludicrous. Black women at Berkeley probably can’t even twerk it right, what with all the time they spend STUDYING and LEARNING as opposed to working on proper hip displacement. A black law student twerking in a club in Oakland would look like… Miley Cyrus to the regular patrons there.

Which is not to say that a booty poster is a great way to advertise your gay party at law school. I’m just saying, Jesus, pick your battles. There are bigger fights out there than how white boys dance. This letter is a fight in search of an issue.

Open Letter to Berkeley Law’s Queer Caucus [Berkeley Law]