love all the threads recently calling out amerocentrism.

it took this long only because american k-pop fans have largely been gaslighting everyone else into thinking that arguments against Amerocentrism are centred on racism/anti-blackness, when that's not always the case. https://twitter.com/debbycx/status/1299176247029690368

people are only NOW finding the right words to describe their very valid thoughts on all the consequences of American imperialism - without racial implications and social justice spaces have traditionally associated it with.

jumping right into assuming that both simply refer to the same thing it is not helpful AT ALL

social justice theory from Tumblr (which forms the basis of the way we approach social justice discourse on twitter today via intersectional feminist theory) is innately Amerocentric in itself, since Americans dominated the platform.

this, while not coming from any malicious intent at all, proved to cause huge problems down the line as these principles were established as universal and hence applicable across the world

ask around how many of your non-American moots spent so much time learning the ropes of sjw Tumblr in the pursuit of being woke, only to realize YEARS later that they couldn't apply most of it to their own local contexts of social inequality like they have been promised?

there is so much emphasis on the whole world needing to comply to American standards of cultural sensitivity but little accountability is had the other way around.

it's a one way street. being American comes with the privilege of being ignorant about everyone else.

American imperialism, as well as America:s position as a global superpower today ensures that American culture, news, politics, everything is exported globally to the shores of countries that, didn't even ask for it. It is not a level playing field.

Amerocentrism feels like such a foreign, recent concept to Americans navigating social justice spaces on the internet, but to the rest of us it is something that truly affects us on the daily.

We are reminded of it everyday - on twitter, on TV, on any media we consume. We are not given the same space to be ignorant about the American culture and way of life, because we simply could never assume that our experiences were universal.

this is a great example, thanks for reminding me!

it is beyond the the capability of Americans to visualize the fact that places outside the US have different racial contexts, dynamics and histories that make cultural appropriation less relevant here. https://twitter.com/HikikomoriKafka/status/1299381685302169600

EVERY TIME discourse on the appropriation of Asian (particularly East + South Asian) culture happens, Americans are so mindblown that those Asians from the mainland aren't very bothered by it, so they're quick to jump to the idea that mainland people are just naturally ignorant.

the reality is that the rest of the world (aside from Western Europe) is simply less individualist and more communal in nature.

cultural exchange is common and is seen as a net positive, especially since it is frequently (thought not always) mutually beneficial.