Erica Yoleeta

Uncomfortable truth time. The world feels entitled to Black American culture. We share it so freely because sharing it has been one of the only ways we’ve been seen. Our intellectual, political, and scientific contributions have erased and delegitimized, but the world still agrees we can make you dance, laugh etc. Since that culture remains our biggest export, we sell it. Because we sell it, every one consumes it, then thinks it’s theirs. It’s not. Our culture is like any other, based on shared history, pain, ingenuity, inspiration, and pressure. There was a tax paid. Like ANY other culture in EXISTENCE you can’t walk in and walk out without an understanding of that tax at the very least. It would be silly to think that. To think that we should just be fully giving of our art, experience, and cultural invention to the world with nothing so much as a conversation would make us the workhorses of the world. No. I wouldn’t expect that from any group in the diaspora. I would expect that if Beyonce did a dancehall album tomorrow, there would be a conversation. I would expect that if Kendrick went Afro Beats and opened a Jollof restaurant we would talk about it. And the obligation we’d have to each other is that the conversation be had with love. That’s the only time we fail, not when we don’t talk about our differences, but when we war about them. But, we are different, and that’s okay. Gates will be kept, but not necessarily locked.