i think the reason so many desi ppl got upset is because they saw taeyong/xiaojun doing the dance and immediately were transported to the last time a white person made fun of them for our culture. i get that. i get wanting your faves to not engender those kinds of feelings in you

but guess what: taeyong and xiaojun are not responsible for the historical traumas that white colonization has inflicted on us. i've seen a lot of ppl say something along the lines of "i know they didn't know it would hurt us but it did." ??? think about that for a second.

the reason they don't know it could hurt you is because they cannot even conceptualize the levels of racial/historical baggage you are placing on them. they don't even THINK about race/ethnicity like that.

+ it's not bc they're not "educated" - they have a completely different relationship to those concepts! they weren't socialized in the west! context matters when talking about these things! historical dynamics matter! this shit is not a game of "who's most problematic today"??

+ if you think that they need to familiarize themselves with the 500 year long baggage of white colonization, baggage that they and their ancestors have almost nothing to do w, maybe rethink what you're asking of these kids who's job is to literally sing + dance + entertain you.

woah, i see this thread making the rounds on corners of twitter i am not even in. i’m thankful ppl found my thoughts worth reading, but i want to emphasize that absolutely nothing in this thread is a defense of antiblackness in kpop. what i’ve written above doesn’t apply to it.

antiblackness is global and is not relegated to one culture or even one historical time, and both kpop stans and idols would do well to read and reflect on it.

this thread is about the taeyong/xiaojun indian dance incident on mcountdown - and i guess you can extrapolate some of what i say here to the make a wish discourse generally - but that’s it. please don’t read things into this thread that i haven’t written.

i just felt like i could comment on this as someone who is both south asian and has a degree in anthropology w concentrations in post-colonialism. a couple ppl have messaged me for resources on those topics, and i’m happy to link articles/books if more ppl are interested in that.

i literally cannot believe i am still adding to this thread but here we go! a couple ppl have pointed out to me that what ppl are mad about is the inclusion of desi dance in a "MENA concept" and the attendant conflation of MENA and s. asian cultures.

i don't read that conflation as problematic bc the aladdin story (which is what i understand MAW to be based on), like all the tales in 1001 nights, has always had folkloric elements rooted in both MENA and s. asian cultures.

my mom had that story read to her as a kid in urdu, decades before disney globalized it. there's very little in that story you can separate out as "explicitly MENA" or "explicitly desi." in fact the original version doesn't even have a known arabic language source (google it).

FINAL POINTS AND THEN I'M MUTING: 1) the definition of C/A i listed above is how scholars of postcolonialism use that concept. you're free to make up new definitions for it, but you're not describing what that term was originally meant to describe.

2) you can still find what they did mocking or offensive. i'm not telling you what to feel. i just think maybe it's important to examine where that feeling is coming from and whether it's something you can actually fault TY/XJ for.

3) the accusation that i'm a 'token desi' is so nonsensical but so offensive that i have to address it: i stan svt. when svt had that 'curry song' scandal a few months ago, i was angry and hurt, because that song IS offensive and mocking, and i absolutely didn't defend them.

i don't even stan nct like that - the next person who calls me a token desi apologist for them is getting blocked, and then you'll have to rely on screenshots to shittalk me, so be forewarned.

4) just bc someone MAY use this thread to justify bad k-idol behavior doesn't mean i shouldn't have made it - what, i can't provide what i think is a more nuanced and accurate take on the situation bc ppl i have no control over will use it to justify completely different things?