So basically, animal crossing added hairdos from black culture, and white people put them on their character in game, and people are genuinely going nuts about it.
Imagine growing up being told your hair is ugly and messy. You have to constantly work to make sure it’s “presentable” for a culture that’s overwhelming white making it harder to get a job because you are worried it’s not professional. Imagine having a hairstyle which people will reach out and try to touch without asking permission. This is a constant in your life because it’s your hair and it’s another mark of how you are treated differently in society.
Then some white people decide it’s cool to dress up some characters with it, and just swap it out whenever.
Worst part is how fallacious the framing of the argument is. Black and other PoC are either saying “don’t do that, that’s insensitive” or making fun of yts being yts while it’s being exported as basically “SJW outrage culture over HAIR!?!?!” in the other corners of the internet.
You can’t win with these people smh
It’s a very, “this issue doesn’t affect me and I don’t want to make the effort to understand it” attitude.
But this issue does not actually affect me, and I actually don’t want to make the effort to understand it.
But who do I listen to? There’s as many POC saying they don’t give a shit as there are people saying it’s insensitive. (I mean I don’t have stats to back that, but in the twitter threads that’s how it looks)
If one side says they don’t care and the other says it bothers them, then you should er on the side of not doing the thing that’s bothering people.
Black people have been struggling to make space in gamer/nerd spaces for decades. It’s not even acceptance from white people, just a space where they can exist without being attacked or appropriated. Nintendo going out of their way to include both darker skin tones and textured hair is basically throwing black people a bone, but the response from non-black gamers has been either complete indifference or outright hostility at the notion that black people are being acknowledged and respected enough to have their features included in-game. This manifested in the whole scramble that’s being alluded to in OP.
Obviously, listen to black people on this and remember that there’s a whole lot of bad faith going around, especially when race is the discussion. It’s not “just about AC hair xDDD”, it’s about the wider discussion of black people in gaming spaces, the general cultural power imbalances between them and non-black gamers, and whether they should exist in them.
IDK, I am African and have exactly the kind of hair that you can make into those hairstyles (but I don’t because I don’t care enough about my appearance), and I don’t think it’s that big of an issue to apply it to a video game character and swap it out.
Everyone has a different experience, are you African in a predominately black culture or a white one?
It just shows how twitter is basically tumblr now. Very annoying to see that stuff but oh well, people literally go insane online
Bob Ross has entered the chat
Ah yes, because a white guy who permed his hair in the 80s had an Afro no one should discuss the interplay of hair and race discrimination.
History will decide
