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.
the fucking state of discourse online holy shit
like it is a game though i think that is the bigger disconect for me like on real life i can understand the reason why to have this discussion but like people wanting to play the game and use the cool hair that is new and stuff because it is a game and it is a big part of animal crossing is about being able to look how you want to look and deal with animal friends it doesn’t seem the same, like i don’t know i might be just not be taking this seriously enough if so i am sorry i just really think it is a game
I have no background on what the twitter drama is nor have I played Animal crossing. Usually though these cases are like one black person on twitter being like “Hey, these hairstyles have a cultural significance to them and we had to fight to have them be acceptable in white spaces. Please don’t use them as a cool costume”. Then a bunch of outraged gamers pile on blowing it up into “OMGZ, it’s just a game I should be able to do what I want, DOES IT OFFEND YOU? ARE YOU TRIGGERED? stupid SJWs”.
History will decide
Having afros, dreads, and cornrows as hairstyles in video games, regardless of the character’s skin color or the player’s race, is nothing new.
dreads are the least offensive because for most of humanity people didn’t bathe everyday so dreadlocks arent specific to one culture. They can be used as a religious thing but it doesnt have to be.
The issue with dreadlocks is that very curly hair will naturally form them far more easily. They are a great low maintenance hairstyle for Black women with the right kind of hair. But if someone mentions dreadlocks the first image that pops into mind for many is normally a white stoner guy and “people didn’t bathe everyday”. So that association makes them “unprofessional” and against uniform policies for many jobs.
Think if your default hairstyle was co-oped by a group of people that then made it harder for you to get a job, and resulted in you having to spend money to keep your hair in a different style.
I should back this stuff up with some theory, so here is a bachelors thesis that I think reading the introduction for would help many people here. It’s nicely written and not overly academic, if you want to go deeper you can follow the links in that text.
and a quote from that text.
Tiana Parker was banned from wearing her hair in dreadlocks at her Oklahoma charter school. According to local news outlet KOKI-TV, Parker’s father (who is himself a barber) was told by school officials from the Deborah Brown Community School in Tulsa that his daughter’s hairstyle wasn’t “presentable,” and felt her hair could “distract from the respectful and serious atmosphere [the school] strives for”
i know and understand what has happened to black people and their hair, especially at work and school, and that’s wrong but i dont think it necessarily makes the other wrong. It’s weird to want some blended society but then also say some things are exclusive. It’s a hair style and it’s natural for some people but not a religious symbol for most. This sort of topic loses everyone except at the most extreme end where people say they are anti racist but then say WHITE STUFF IS WHITE AND BLACK STUFF IS BLACK. And it’s ridiculous and it’s an extension of the bubble known at Twitter.
Also black culture has never been more popular than it is right now and we have a lot of different people here. It’s literally unavoidable for this to happen.
It just shows how twitter is basically tumblr now. Very annoying to see that stuff but oh well, people literally go insane online
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.
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?
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.
