Blackfishing | Relationship between representation and popular culture with reference to Blackfishing
By Phila Dyasi | published by NUBLACCSOUL (PTY) LTD.
Stories from Africa to the World @PhilaDyasi | @NUBLACCSOUL
January 29, 2022, Saturday. Johannesburg, South Africa 22:39 (GMT+2).
The commodity that is Black culture is valued and valuable to those who consume it, but there is no value placed on the Black people who birthed this culture that is endlessly commodified for capitalist means and ends. This results not only in cultural appropriation in general, but of late, as Blackfishing, as non-Black individuals want to retain the privilege and proximity to whiteness, and simultaneously, the credentials and cultural capital within Black spaces, and thus we have Blackfishing.
A term that was coined by famed African American journalist and hip-hop culture scholar, Wanna Thompson (2018), to describe the growing trend of non-Black suspicious individuals who were assuming faux racial identities through the use of photo editing applications and software, plastic surgery and so forth, to pretend to be Black.
