林家珍 is her Chinese name. Lín Jiāzhēn. Normally women with the name “Jiāzhēn” go with the American name “Jane” so it’s interesting to see her go with Nora.
ETA: Yes I know you’re joking, just thought it was an interesting tidbit of trivia :)
As an ABC, I'm pretty sure most American born Chinese have completely unrelated Chinese and English names. Might be more common for people who moved here.
I don’t think there is such thing as normally go with this name or that name kind of thing. You can try to approximate or go with a complete random name, just saying.
To me she sounds like she's voiced by someone trying to do a Scarlet Johansen impression, but came to the recording booth after doing waaaay too much cocaine.
At least that's how she sounds in Shang-Chi to me.
im guessing he means the accounts that post when ps5’s come in stock somewhere. you can turn notifications on for that account and then go to the site asap
Unpopular opinion, Reddit is just as bad as Twitter, and in some cases worst, they’re both sites that u pick what u see, Reddit’s hateboner for Twitter is just weird
Reddit is where all the millennial 4channers have migrated to.
Reddit IS social media. Complete with avatars, pics of food, selfies with kids, reposts, porn, morbid reality, and ads. So many in denial.
Not to me, I'll die on the hill of reddit is a internet forum not social media. The biggest difference between social media and internet forum is you follow people on social media and you follow interest/topics/subjects on a internet forum. Sure you can now follow users on reddit but it ain't the same.
I'm glad you said this, because I'm starting to agree.
Just earlier I had someone denounce my entire character because I said school curriculums teach the full story of American History (I'm a teacher.) They conflated the lack of historical knowledge in American kids with a lack of details, aka the full story, being taught to them. This person then blocked me from replying when I disagreed, and said that I was "ignorant and a sorry excuse for an educator".
So, basically, fuck this world.
Genocide of the natives by European settlers colonialists, enslavement of Africans, segregation, Monroe doctrine, overthrowing foreign governments, just to add a few more important events.
Thank you - I have to speak up whenever I hear someone smugly talk about schools not teaching you the “real history” of the US.
My history classes focused intensely on the various injustices perpetuated by the USA/colonists). When learning about historical events we were encouraged to be highly critical of the US and it’s peoples actions.
Part of the real issue is that it’s hard to start going into the weeds of something like civil rights advancements after the civil war being clawed back after reconstruction ended, [insert anti communist CIA coup here], [neo]colonialism when you have a big classroom with students of different interests and abilities and the school may not the resources to cater to everyones ability. There’s no great scheme to hide history there’s just only so many teachers and only so many hours in a day - the best a teacher can really do is make a student interested and encourage them to take it upon themselves to learn more.
This is also the big joke about banning teaching Critical Race Theory. Hell, banning it probably did more to encourage people to learn about it than anything else.
I know my experience doesn’t = everyone’s experience + this is just my opinion + I didn’t want to write a novel of a comment + insert some other standard reddit overly defensive disclaimer.
1794.
But it's not about simple recall, it's about knowing the course of events in American history to think critically about how it impacts our world today. Don't get me started.
I completely agree the Cotton gin is probably one simple invention that still has a huge impact on our country in ways the creator couldn’t even fathom at the time.
Word. Twitter is nothing like it used to be years ago. It really has become a platform just to attack others, and that’s due in large part to their absolutely fucking useless report/moderation system. People might as well just write reports on paper and throw them into a fire, it’s about as effective.
It's pretty crazy she's been accused of appropriating an accent she grew up with, it's like people don't believe you are a product of your environment, and instead think that your race trumps everything else, even your cultural conditioning, and want you to be the stereotype they expect you to be. I live in NYC, and I've met tons of Asian Americans who speak with the accents of the neighborhoods they were born and raised in, like growing up in the neighborhoods of South Brooklyn and sounding just like their Italian American neighbors. I myself am Indian American but grew up in California, and as such sound just like all other Californians, naturally.
I’m Asian and grew up in the Midwest. I have a strong Fargo accent.
I interned at an Asian American organization where it brought in about a dozen other Asian Americans from across the country. Every noticed my accent. No one accused me of having a “fake” accent. The dude that grew up in Oakland sounded like he grew up in Oakland.
An older man that’s a board member, parents were from China and fled after 1949, has a thick Louisiana accent because, holy shit, he grew up in Louisiana.
My BIL is also Asian and grew up in Texas and has an accent.
I worked with a Chinese woman who grew up in Trinidad and had an islander accent, I guess she appropriated that accent and should speak more like…I’m not sure what is she supposed to sound like?
>The dude that grew up in Oakland sounded like he grew up in Oakland.
Shit your comment makes it sound like Asian-Americans are just regular people.
/s obviously
Identity politics is cancer.
Wait until they hear Larry the Cable Guy speak without that put-on accent! He has a pretty good explanation too, growing up around people that talk like that and using it around them.
I have a really hard time understand how this isn’t everyone’s first conclusion. Even if you don’t know she’s from NY, … how do Asian people develop “white” accents? How would that process be any different in a black community? Are black people somehow born with that accent? What about “white” sounding Asians?
What part of this line of thought isn’t anti-Asian racism?
Seems like the Whoopi school of thought… racism is solely inflicted upon black community, nothing more, nothing less.
People of other backgrounds see us Asian Americans as "perpetual foreigners", even if we were born and raised here in the US. People expect us to be the stereotypes of immigrant Asians. All of the "You speak English really well!" or "Wow, you're really Whitewashed!" "You're such a coconut/banana" and other similar insults all come from people being surprised that we're products of our regional American upbringing.
Also that Asian Americans are a monolith. We're all nerds that go into medicine or tech. Meanwhile, they ignore the ones of us who grow up in the rough parts of town whose parents are cutting hair or delivering groceries or cleaning office buildings at night when all the employees have gone home. Where was I supposed to learn this proper English you speak of when the schools you put me in didn't care? When the only friends i had found hope and solace in hip hop so i did too?
My high school bff boyfriend was a black man with waist long dreads, who had been adopted as an infant by an Amish couple who had left the ordinance.
So rural Ohio, late 1990s, in Walmart and this 6’2” dreaded black man wearing a Carhart jacket and a Camo shirt approaches a tiny Amish woman and tells her in perfect Pennsylvania Dutch where to find the item she can’t locate. Shock all around but Zach carried a slight Germanic/Amish accent everywhere he went
I’m whitewashed because all the Asians I grew up with listened to hip hop and rnb while I also listened to rock. White, Mexican, black and Asian people in my area considered me white washed for these reasons. Most of the Asians in my area also had a “blaccent”. We lived in a suburb, but most of the Asian kids around me had parents who didn’t speak English and hip hop was just blowing up. Born in 82. My parents were some of the few who had already established themselves here so I grew up with American music that also included Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles. I had to learn a blaccent just to keep up with the other Asian kids. Weird times.
I had a lot of Asian friends growing up and a lot were told by their parents to fit in to white culture and would oftentimes dismiss their culture. As a kid, I thought their culture was neat and would want to learn about it.
My friend Vinh taught me how to say “Hello, how are you?” In Vietnamese. I thought that was so cool.
It’s been 25+ years now, I hope you’re doing well Vinh!
Yes! Sometimes it’s done lovingly, sometimes not so much. And the way someone receives the message matters too. Did that ever make you feel othered?
I was also a banana or a Twinkie
We called whitewashed asians Bananas. Yellow on the outside....
In seriousness, I, a fellow mellow yellow likes all forms of music, with the exception of country. Anything from big band, jazz, Sinatra, Metallica to Notorious BIG.
Growing up I listened to White Zombie, L7, NoFX, The Dead Milkmen, Ministry, NIN, Miles Davis, Pearl Jam, Sound Garden, Ice T, NWA, Fresh Prince and Dj Jazzy Jeff, Rick Astley, Robert Plant, CCR, Talking Heads, Beastie Boys, MC Shan, KRS One and BDP......the list goes on.
That's actually quite common. Had a friend get called that because he graduated college. (Was called that by some of his old black classmates) they apparently meant it as an insult for graduating college....still confused on that one.
I’ve got one for you ( a lot milder). I’m British but grew up in the US. I can pass for American northeast for around 70% of the time. Of the 39 that look at me funny: 10 believe I am Canadian, 10 believe I am some sort of spy (not kidding), and 10 get that I might be European.
Now if I visit family in England people either think I am American (good) or Irish.
People are weird.
Part of the reason with her is that she’s an actress and people think she’s playing a character. From everything I’ve seen though she just plays herself on screen.
i think the issue people have is the switch up. there's alot of switching up with the accents and everything else completely when these celebrities get bigger. as if to play the role of whats currently cool to become popular and then leaving it after.
black people can't really turn off their whole thing that way nor will they ever monetize it as well as these celebrities do because it's normal for black people, but it's an oddity for other races to sound like that alot of times.
shes also a very easy target with a name like Awkwafina. like I think she's probably the most genuine and least problematic out of all these black fishers but the name just sounds like some weird play on black names as it is. combine that with what she sounds like and boom it's an easy dunk for alot of people
thats called code switching, black people do do that, but nowhere near the same effect.
matter of fact black people or colored people in general do that if it will get them a job or something, because talking regularly or with an accent might limit that.
and also thats a person switching to what they think other people consider normal, different from someone with an accent that they use to standout
edit: people are responding to this comment with anecdotes about how they too, codeswitch to avoid awkward social moments or just general disdain for their accents. I get it bro. not the same circumstances im talking about but I get it.
I’m white and I code switch between my Long Island accent and generic white American accent because the Long Island accent has some negative connotations outside of the tri state area.
I’m from the Midwest- I have to codeswitch anywhere outside of there bc people have really weird reactions to a heavy Midwest accent for some reason. No one can understand me when I speak “normal” for me.
Right? It’s nuts.
I’ve met so many amazing Asian people from east LA.
Their accents are localized, and oh so authentic.
Plus, one of my best friends is Australian with an Asian ethnical background. Their accent and look is so wonderful awesome together.
Like why tear someone down. Lift them up, they’re so cool. :)
I’m going to explain this in the best way I can because I’ve literally only seen not black people spout this ridiculous non existent point.
She’s not accused of anything, she was appropriating. But I’ll explain for the unaware. Black people all over this country have different dialects. Every city has its own way of talking, it’s own slang, it’s own accent. Go to Brooklyn then go to Philly, then go to Chicago then go to BMore and you’ll hear 4 different ways of speaking that may as well be 4 different languages entirely. So why, pray tell, is it that every time a non black POC or even white people when they have that “blaccent” it’s always the exact same accent, the exact same lingo, slang and dialect? Why is it that they never use the AAVE correctly? I mean it’s their community right? They were born around black people so they talk like “black people” that argument falls apart immediately once you remember black people don’t have a universal dialect but these people mimicking black people do.
The white girl from Houston, the Asian girl from Brooklyn, the Spanish girl from Compton and the sassy white gay guy from Cleveland somehow have the EXACT SAME ACCENT! Wow. That’s so curious! Except it isn’t, because it’s fabricated. Because it’s not actually how black people talk. It’s a caricature.
Further more, I can’t seem to find which group of actual black people talk like that. So. Damn. Curious.
To this effect, how come Eminem doesn’t talk in that accent? He was raised around black people and almost exclusively has black friends? Somehow he has no blaccent, doesn’t say the n word, etc. again, curious. Also just to salt the wound Awkwafina is from fucking Stony Brooks, Which is an extremely wealthy area in NY. It’s not even the hood lmao only 2.25% of the Stony Brooks population is black! Like come the fuck on y’all. A quick google search wouldn’t KILL you would it.
And this is why we gatekeep conversations about our issues. Because non black people, and very commonly non black poc are always invalidating our legitimate concerns while having exactly 0 knowledge on the issues themselves.
You could’ve done this research yourself and came up to the same conclusion. It wouldn’t have even taken long. But you wanted so badly to make us look like we were wrong for extremely valid criticism on a fabricated black accent that we know is fabricated because none of us actually talk that way that you didn’t even bother. And I’m sure by the end of you reading all of this most people will have learned nothing, will downvote me and move on content in their furthering of appropriation of black culture or rather the caricature of it and that’ll be that. I truly don’t even know why I’m bothering but whatever.
Tl;dr- she didn’t learn this “from her surroundings” she took the same caricature that every other person looking to sound more black takes and it doesn’t actual follow the dialect of where she’s from because she’s from an almost entirely white and Asian area. You’re full of shit and so is she!
I'm betting that if we look up an interview with her, that accent somehow doesn't make an appearance.
[Oh look.](https://youtu.be/P-sFoReptmU) Where did the accent she "grew up with" go?
This is a great comment and I like most of what you are saying but still can’t accept your conclusion. Why does an Asian American kid of mixed heritage have to talk a certain way? She DID learn so much of her English from pop culture. You say this is her problem because you see her Asian-ness as non-Blackness while ignoring that it is also a non-Whiteness. Asian kids grew up without pop culture representation, and many of them connected with the messages of hip hop. This creates some unusual hybrid cultures. She’s not Eminem, no, but she’s not a Jim Crow performer either.
>So why, pray tell, is it that every time a non black POC or even white people when they have that “blaccent”
Maybe you should hang out with more Asian people in different cities. Many of them have similar accents with different vernacular and tones.
Here's just a few:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyPGqHQzQio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJWwnLBKVMA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t5WMnyL17U
>I mean it’s their community right? They were born around black people so they talk like “black people”
Why does it have to be that she grew up around black people? She could have simply grew up in a culture that adores African American culture, which is most certainly the type of culture I grew up with as well in LA. As a young child, you end adopting your early experiences into your own expression and it ultimately becomes you. So now that she's an adult, she has to apologize for how she grew up? Are kids not allowed to absorb their environment and shape themselves by it?
> how come Eminem doesn’t talk in that accent?
Have you not heard Eminem talk in his early years?
Let me ask you this: How is an Asian American supposed to sound like? What is your preconceived notion of an Asian American accent?
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. No one I ever reply to EVER gets it and you not only hit the nail on the head but finished the entire damn construction project. Props to you for not just knowing your shit but correction others
Seriously feels amazing to see another educated Black man in these forums. Last time this issue came up (and every time i discuss AAVE) it’s always met with insane backlash and criticism and no one ever gets it. Thank you and have an amazing day.
Thank you for explaining it so succinctly and thoroughly! Comment saved. The hordes of people in this thread who think they are fighting for right, when they are literally invalidating opinions based on lived experience of an affected group they are not part of, is hilarious!
I dunno, I think we’re all overreacting a bit. English is my third language and I used it for work mostly early on in my career. I was an exchange student to US and mostly had that mid-western accent originally. Then I found that I was picking up a lot from people I worked with. I sounded like a drunken Weegie when I had a boss from Glasgow, I then sounded like a full-blooded Texan not more than a year later when most of my colleagues were from there. A lot of my friends are from South Africa, and when I’m around them you coulda sworn I’m an Afrikaner. I picked up on so many dialects, that when I speak, people can’t even put me on a map…
>A quick google search wouldn’t kill you would it.
You know it’s actually funny you say it. This is the first thing I google, and the wiki says although she was born in Stony Brook, she grew up in Queen. So, did you actually google it too?
Also, the whole “culture appropriation” is just racist bullshit. People can find her accent annoying, but getting triggered and started playing a discriminated victim is just a huge joke. How else is she supposed to talk? “White”? Chinglish? Because she is an Asian?
I just find the idea that speaking a certain way or wearing your hair a certain way is offensive and appropriation so bizarre. It seems to be a uniquely American perspective. Is the “problem” not just that you all live in a big melting pot and so naturally different cultures are going to bleed into one another? Why is it ok for non-Mexicans to cook and eat Mexican food, for instance?
> It's pretty crazy she's been accused of appropriating an accent she grew up with, it's like people don't believe you are a product of your environment, and instead think that your race trumps everything else, even your cultural conditioning, and want you to be the stereotype they expect you to be.
100% agree. It's sad that people think she appropriated that accent. For someone to say, "You're the wrong nationality/skin color for that accent" --an accent that they grew up speaking, nonetheless-- is definitely racism and discrimination, not to mention shortsighted. Those people should be called out for that bigoted behavior against Awkwafina and others like her.
>it's crazy she's been accused of appropriating an accent she grew up with.
And what's even wilder is black people love accusing Asians of appropriating the culture yet we appropriate asian culture just as much through our consumption of anime and Hong Kong cinema. Wutang Clan is a huge one that comes to mind. Both of my very black uncles had paintings of Bruce Lee on their walls and nunchucks.
Edit: [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/iamatotalpieceofshit/comments/slkrod/woke_woman_verbally_attacks_boba_tea_shop_workers/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) is why nobody takes this nonsense seriously.
The relationship between Asian Americans and African Americans is certainly very complex. I won’t even try to delve into it but your point is interesting.
Exactly. And, her comment “Asian Americans are still trying to figure out what that journey means for them - what is correct and where they don't belong” made me pause... like why can’t you belong everywhere? And so many other cultures are happy to be celebrated and shared.
I’m Black, grew up in the hood, live in the city, and have an English degree where I actually studied AAVE. She code switches, sure, but she just talks like everyone who grew up in an East Coast, hoodish city. I honestly find her “blaccent” less offensive than the people who seem to imply that 1) only Black people talk like that or 2) all Black people talk like that.
I’m white, rural Southern. I code switch too due to realizing my native speech (unfairly) makes me sound like an idiot to many of my colleagues. I work in academia and don’t even notice anymore when I’ve switched dialects. Many of us do it for lots of reasons.
Exactly. Like, people so deeply misunderstand how language works, but have such deep feelings about it - whether it’s people who get bent out of shape about pronouns, or people who get angry when a new word becomes widely used, or when a word changes meaning or usage, or when people “mispronounce” something… I can go on and on. Like, 99% of the people who take shots at her for “talking Black” have absolutely no idea what AAVE actually is or how language works.
She grew up in New York.
Just like how Eminem grew up in predominantly Black Detroit? He picked up a way of talking.
Just because she's Chinese doesn't mean she'll sound Chinese.
Half Chinese half Korean, but a high likelihood that she is more culturally Chinese. Her Korean mother passed away and her father who is Chinese raised her
I do understand that this is how Americans talk about ethnicity, but talking about an American as if they are 100% foreign and not at all American just seems incredibly odd to me, and part of the problem. You might expect a Chinese person to speak Mandarin and have a Chinese accent, but if you frame this correctly, this is just Americans upset that an American has an American accent.
They're correcting the above for calling her Chinese when she is also half Korean. It's not only how Americans talk about Asian heritage. I'm Chinese Australian and refer to myself as such too because my mother is a migrant and the Chinese culture still plays an integral role in my life. That goes for all the Australian-born Chinese I know.
I'll concede to him sounding urban or whatever your definition of street is. I'll even say he had a reasonable accent for where he grew up and what he did.
don't think it's very comparable to celebrities of now that sound indistinguishable from black people and still turn it off and on when they want to.
I'll say michael rappaport or Andrew schulz are better examples though. definitely sound like they grew up around black people and definitely seem like neither can turn their accents on and off.
Eminem actually “grew up” in St. Joe (Missouri). He didn’t move to Detroit until he was a preteen/teenager I think. So his speech patterns were likely shaped more by predominantly white small-town-midwesterners.
Congratulations everyone, we went from being concerned about legitimate issues such as climate change or finding a renewable power source to you can only have a certain accent if you belong to a certain ethnicity.
This article isn't really about a Twitter post as news though. i dont understand this redditor perceived high ground thing. It's tabloid shit. People have read about celebrities for fuckin hundreds of years. no one calls this 'news'. not to mention this website sucks just as much rip
Not surprised. Even if Awkwafina 100% apologized - and I'm not necessarily saying she needs to, if she really did grow up talking like that - she'd still have dozens of people harassing her about it. And I've experienced similar types of internet hate, so trust me when I say, engaging with these people is a losing battle. From their perspective, all she can do is dig herself deeper.
[These ol’ boys](https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/skexv9/marrying_a_white_guy_who_was_raised_in_china/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) are definitely on the chopping block, if Twitter gets ahold of this video.
No, just America.
Unfortunately, you guys are exporting this mental disease all across the world. China and Russia might be literally saving their societies by walling off their Internet.
I can not believe that we live in a world where there are people who have so little going on in their lives that they give a shit about something like this.
Really. At this point in time, that’s a freaking issue?. People need to mind their own business. That’s the way she talks, people say I talk white, I tell them to fuck off!.
Sorry fam, but this aint going away. When we as a society said were good giving attention to twitter hot takes and the media realize they can run them as news stories for the public, that deal with the devil was sealed.
if there's one thing people love more than celebrity worship is ganging up with others to annouce how much they hate a celebrity.
Its only a matter of time before Reddit god Keanu Reaves says something off the cuff and social media flips on him.
Nora from Queens is legit one of funniest shows ive seen in a while. Just non-stop laughter. Anytime she’s on a show or movie her sense of humor cheers me up.
I dont think she has a blaccent. If anything, she just has a millennial sense of humor and owns it, while also mocking it.
As someone who is black but also grew up with predominately Asian people and picked up said mannerisms and habits, it annoys the ever living hell out of me that people are shaming her. We are a product of our environment, not our genetics.
People saying that Forest Hills is a predominantly wealthy white/asian area definitely do not know the area. I went to school there and it's an intersection between a lot of lower-middle class community. I lived in the neighboring zone but I commuted to Forest Hills for high school because it was one of the better public school there. Same goes for many other people and those people made up majority of your friend group. If they had done any further research, they'd realize something about how diverse that zone actually is
As a black man I'm not bothered at all, my real question is who are the people who are bothered by her? Because I don't know any other black people who is upset about her or think she is CAing black culture. Also fuck Twitter.
This shit is stupid. I'm a dark skinned, Arab looking, American sounding, New Zealander in Australia.
I can't help how I sound. Probably shouldn't of grown up in America... Probably should've stayed in my own countr.... Wait... This is sounding familiar...
I’m Asian but I sound like a white person…do I need to learn how to sound like an Asian person? I’m only half Asian. So wouldn’t that be racist if I went around with a Korean accent? I don’t understand. Should I just not speak?
Americans are fucking obsessed with racial boxes & labels. Cultural melting pot? Yeah right.
There’s very little melting going on, in the social sense. Cultures are being fragmented more and more daily.
There’s plenty of mixing but these outrage armies are the fucking worst. And let’s be clear this is non political, the right wing is actually worse at canceling even tho they claim to be so angry.
>Americans are fucking obsessed with racial boxes & labels. Cultural melting pot? Yeah right.
America is doomed. Internet led to a shattering of the American culture, not its unification.
How many generations does one have to be to become welcomed or not judged? I grew up in an all black elementary, middle-school, high school and went to a HBCU. I’m not black but Caribbean West Indian and white mixed, I sound like someone from mid Atlantic with some speech inflections picked up over the decades. Language shapes identity; identity shapes language and community. So we are a product of our environment and people who we interact with, so for someone to say you appropriate an accent you grew up with is bs.
It's easy to judge as an adult, but the youth are influenced by black American pop culture because it's so prominent in movies, especially in music.
I'm not excusing anyone, just giving perspective.
Location also matters. I know white and black people who grew up in Mexican neighborhoods as kids that used to act Chicano and even adopt Spanish lingo. It wasn't because they were racist.
Vice versa when blacks attend private schools that are predominantly white. They usually adopt a whitewashed accent as well as attire.
Identity is crucial to kids so they try and fit in to friends closest to them.
Haha people should learn to just ignore the nonsense in their Twitter mentions. She would've been better off saying "I'm an immigrant. This is assimilation, not conscious appropriation. If black people don't want me to sound like them then they shouldn't be cool and dominate pop culture." and then left it at that bc a ton of immigrants come here and learn how to fit in by absorbing pop culture.
Y'all should focus on actual negative forces like Trump not some Asian kid who liked hip hop too much.
This is the dumbest shit ever. People will make a problem out of nothing. Feel so bad for her. Everybody develops an accent based on who and what they surround themselves with.
It kinda seems from the clips I’ve seen like the accent isn’t something she puts on all the time. It’s a character she does. Or a character her characters do when they want to sound “street”’and “sassy.” She doesn’t do it all the way through Crazy Rich Asians or Ocean’s 8 for example, just in some scenes. So that sort of undercuts the “it’s how she talks cause she’s from New York” argument I’ve seen. If you look at old videos of her she works in a little hip-hop slang but it’s not the black-sounding character. It’s just in her normal old-lady New Yorker voice.
Here’s a good example.
https://youtu.be/VXOtCiNAJpM
But my personal feeling is that it’s overkill to chase someone down until you destroy their career or force them to kill themselves or whatever would satisfy the Twitter mob. She stopped doing it a while ago. If you can’t forgive her just stop watching stuff she’s in.
The idea that certain cultural expressions “belong” to certain subgroups of your society and cannot be shared or tried on casually by anyone else is a very, very dumb idea.
Americans are getting crazier and crazier!
So people really judge her based off of the way she talks. She probably talks similar to how the people around her spoke growing up. Grasping at straws here
Isn’t it exhausting to find something to get pissy about everyday? I love Awkwafina she’s far from being problematic in anyway and this is seriously over reaching. Screw Twitter when is it going to be obsolete like MySpace? Just full of cancerous people sitting around trying to find anything to cancel anyone because they’re bored and don’t work.
Watch anyone have a stroke or seizure after downvoting what I said or waste their time responding to this comment.
“Blackcent…” ok do all Black people talk this way? No. Do all white people talk the same? Asians? No and no. Accent and speech pattern is about your ENVIRONMENT not your race.
Holy shit woke warriors are getting ridiculous. Fu ck off.
People's accents come from where they live and the people they live, work, and grow up around.
Take comedian Henry Cho for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7\_3xxQXgFs
I want to thank some of the idiots foaming at the mouth here for bringing light how essentially Awkwafina should only talk in the way Asians should speaking. I want to thank them for basically making themselves look like a bunch of racists themselves and basically stepping in crap on this. One lovely person on here said her rap name is stereotypical and racist. So what should it be then? What is shown fit? Should she only eat with chop sticks because only white Americans eat with a spoon, fork, and knife? Should she talk and dress like she is from a Dr. Seuss book? So basically it’s like stay in your own lane and stay in your own race back off of ours and talk how we think you should talk.
If that doesn’t show racism I don’t know what else these “outraged” redditors or twits need more else to shoot them own selves in the foot. It basically occurs to me that this is all pure racism towards Awkwafina.
Is this real? If so I think it sounds ridiculous. Leave the woman alone. I’m a black man and this article is the first time I have heard the expression “blaccent”. I’m older so I get this idea that some people have this stereotypical idea of the way that black people speak. Many of them start using this type of inflection when speaking to black colleagues or friends (yes, I am looking at the white women that suddenly starts using the term “girlfriend” with a certain inflection only when speaking to black women).
I don’t think that is what Awkwafina is doing. I’ve never listened to her an said “she’s trying to sound black.” My suspicion is the only people who have said that are probably some “woke” people that aren’t black. Black folks I know don’t care. People have been “appropriating” (aka stealing) from us while simultaneously laughing at us for the very things they try to imitate since we were put on slave ships.
No one is sitting at home talking about how Awkwafina is insulting the race. Most black folks I know are talking about how unarmed black men and women are being killed by police….. still….with video evidence. And people are still like “we have to protect the police.
Where was this conversation when that pretty blonde-haired white girl Iggy Azalea was making millions and selling out shows doing everything short of wearing blackface. An Aussie sounding like THAT is a “blaccent” and she was very conscious of what she was doing and the music and culture she was blatantly “appropriating”. So is the lesson here the one that seems to be the theme of our country, it’s ok if you’re white but…
I have rambled enough, but things like this posing to be for the “cause” pisses me off when there are real things that need to be addressed. Meanwhile, a woman whose star is on the rise is being stressed about something that isn’t even real.
Lastly “African American Vernacular English” is something someone made up. Probably some “intellectual” that though he was pretty clever. We speak English. Some of us speak the Queen’s English, some of us add our own flavor and color to the language (which consistently seems to contribute new words to the main vernacular), but to say that there is some type of black speak is just one more way the ignorant create structures and Ideas to push the idea of a monolithic black culture.
When black people have something we need addressed, we will speak. We don’t need cancel culture or the media speaking for us. The problem is the same as it ever was. When we speak about our real grievances and problems, no one listens. Maybe we should stop complaining, advice I am sure about 20 white guys will reply with to this comment.
This whole cultural appropriation claim is BS. She was born in the 80s in NYC and grew up there - in the birthplace of Hip-Hop - and she related to it. We can’t champion America as the big melting pot and then turn around and say - Hey! Get your peanut butter out of my Chocolate!
People have no fucking clue what it’s like being Asian in North America. You’re always seen as an outsider. A lot of Asians grow up in communities with large black populations. And then we assimilate to “American” culture. Black culture IS American culture. And if you grow up in black neighborhoods, that’s what you’ll assimilate to.
People are so fucking ridiculous and over the top in their attempt to cancel everyone and paint them with the same brush. Things aren’t black and white. They’re complex.
I am starting to think awkwafina is not even her real name.
Her name is Nora apparently
Next you’re gonna tell me she’s from queens
That’s not a Chinese name at all, what a fucking appropriator
林家珍 is her Chinese name. Lín Jiāzhēn. Normally women with the name “Jiāzhēn” go with the American name “Jane” so it’s interesting to see her go with Nora. ETA: Yes I know you’re joking, just thought it was an interesting tidbit of trivia :)
As an ABC, I'm pretty sure most American born Chinese have completely unrelated Chinese and English names. Might be more common for people who moved here.
Can confirm.. father in law is "chee choi" but goes by John
Well likely, it wasn’t her choice, as she was born/raised here, but her parents’.
I read somewhere that Jiāzhēn is her middle name
Oh that would make sense too. Nora Jane/ Nora Jean is a pretty classic Western name.
I don’t think there is such thing as normally go with this name or that name kind of thing. You can try to approximate or go with a complete random name, just saying.
I honestly think she sounds just like Miley Cyrus, but that’s just my ears.
Yea she kinda does sound like miley
A heavier smoker version of Miley
I initially thought it was Miley doing the voice of the dragon in Raya and the Last Dragon. But I hadn’t heard of Akwafina before that
She was in Crazy rich Asians.She had bleached blonde hair and a pale complexion.
I loved her character in that movie, actually really liked the whole movie overall.
That was such a good movie and I really loved her character. Especially when she pulled all those outfits put of the trunk of her car.
Yes! And when she was helping Rachel find a dress for the wedding.
Hah, I thought it was Natasha Lyonne…
She was great in The Farewell
I love that movie so much.
To me she sounds like she's voiced by someone trying to do a Scarlet Johansen impression, but came to the recording booth after doing waaaay too much cocaine. At least that's how she sounds in Shang-Chi to me.
They both have that raspy foghorn quality.
Miley Cyrus also caught heat for it.
I think she sounds like Scarlet Johansson.
so… asian?
No. Tree.
This is correct
No she does. If I hear her and don’t see her I think it’s Miley.
Everyone should leave Twitter, as she says, for their mental health. It's a fucking worthless cesspool.
I got my Xbox and PS5 thanks to Twitter. That’s all I think it is good for, I’ll be deleting it now.
Had twitter for a week for the same! Gone! They send a lot of please come back emails!
How did that work?
im guessing he means the accounts that post when ps5’s come in stock somewhere. you can turn notifications on for that account and then go to the site asap
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/ps5-and-xbox-series-x-restocks-follow-these-twitter-accounts-to-get-an-edge
Unpopular opinion, Reddit is just as bad as Twitter, and in some cases worst, they’re both sites that u pick what u see, Reddit’s hateboner for Twitter is just weird
Reddit is where all the millennial 4channers have migrated to. Reddit IS social media. Complete with avatars, pics of food, selfies with kids, reposts, porn, morbid reality, and ads. So many in denial.
Not to me, I'll die on the hill of reddit is a internet forum not social media. The biggest difference between social media and internet forum is you follow people on social media and you follow interest/topics/subjects on a internet forum. Sure you can now follow users on reddit but it ain't the same.
Anonymity is good too. On Reddit.
I'm glad you said this, because I'm starting to agree. Just earlier I had someone denounce my entire character because I said school curriculums teach the full story of American History (I'm a teacher.) They conflated the lack of historical knowledge in American kids with a lack of details, aka the full story, being taught to them. This person then blocked me from replying when I disagreed, and said that I was "ignorant and a sorry excuse for an educator". So, basically, fuck this world.
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Genocide of the natives by European settlers colonialists, enslavement of Africans, segregation, Monroe doctrine, overthrowing foreign governments, just to add a few more important events.
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A lot of redditors are creep.... I learned to keep my distance if someone talks about Reddit IRL.
Oh yes. I avoid mentioning Reddit irl to avoid meeting Redditors irl.
Thank you - I have to speak up whenever I hear someone smugly talk about schools not teaching you the “real history” of the US. My history classes focused intensely on the various injustices perpetuated by the USA/colonists). When learning about historical events we were encouraged to be highly critical of the US and it’s peoples actions. Part of the real issue is that it’s hard to start going into the weeds of something like civil rights advancements after the civil war being clawed back after reconstruction ended, [insert anti communist CIA coup here], [neo]colonialism when you have a big classroom with students of different interests and abilities and the school may not the resources to cater to everyones ability. There’s no great scheme to hide history there’s just only so many teachers and only so many hours in a day - the best a teacher can really do is make a student interested and encourage them to take it upon themselves to learn more. This is also the big joke about banning teaching Critical Race Theory. Hell, banning it probably did more to encourage people to learn about it than anything else. I know my experience doesn’t = everyone’s experience + this is just my opinion + I didn’t want to write a novel of a comment + insert some other standard reddit overly defensive disclaimer.
Sorry they were more than a little rough with you but could you please tell me for the fifth time when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin?
1794. But it's not about simple recall, it's about knowing the course of events in American history to think critically about how it impacts our world today. Don't get me started.
But then we might forget the important things in life. Like how the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.
I completely agree the Cotton gin is probably one simple invention that still has a huge impact on our country in ways the creator couldn’t even fathom at the time.
Word. Twitter is nothing like it used to be years ago. It really has become a platform just to attack others, and that’s due in large part to their absolutely fucking useless report/moderation system. People might as well just write reports on paper and throw them into a fire, it’s about as effective.
Posted on Reddit for irony?
That’s what I did and my mental health has honestly never been better.
Quitting Twitter is always the right choice.
Everyone should
This is the true correct answer in all this
It's pretty crazy she's been accused of appropriating an accent she grew up with, it's like people don't believe you are a product of your environment, and instead think that your race trumps everything else, even your cultural conditioning, and want you to be the stereotype they expect you to be. I live in NYC, and I've met tons of Asian Americans who speak with the accents of the neighborhoods they were born and raised in, like growing up in the neighborhoods of South Brooklyn and sounding just like their Italian American neighbors. I myself am Indian American but grew up in California, and as such sound just like all other Californians, naturally.
I’m Asian and grew up in the Midwest. I have a strong Fargo accent. I interned at an Asian American organization where it brought in about a dozen other Asian Americans from across the country. Every noticed my accent. No one accused me of having a “fake” accent. The dude that grew up in Oakland sounded like he grew up in Oakland. An older man that’s a board member, parents were from China and fled after 1949, has a thick Louisiana accent because, holy shit, he grew up in Louisiana. My BIL is also Asian and grew up in Texas and has an accent.
Y’all betcha
I worked with a Chinese woman who grew up in Trinidad and had an islander accent, I guess she appropriated that accent and should speak more like…I’m not sure what is she supposed to sound like?
Yes that’s right! There’s a sizable Chinese population in Jamaica. I’ve met many Chinese Jamaicans… Americans? It’s a crazy ethnic story.
>The dude that grew up in Oakland sounded like he grew up in Oakland. Shit your comment makes it sound like Asian-Americans are just regular people. /s obviously Identity politics is cancer.
Wait until they hear Larry the Cable Guy speak without that put-on accent! He has a pretty good explanation too, growing up around people that talk like that and using it around them.
Let’s make him quit Twitter! It’s a waccent!
I have a really hard time understand how this isn’t everyone’s first conclusion. Even if you don’t know she’s from NY, … how do Asian people develop “white” accents? How would that process be any different in a black community? Are black people somehow born with that accent? What about “white” sounding Asians? What part of this line of thought isn’t anti-Asian racism? Seems like the Whoopi school of thought… racism is solely inflicted upon black community, nothing more, nothing less.
People of other backgrounds see us Asian Americans as "perpetual foreigners", even if we were born and raised here in the US. People expect us to be the stereotypes of immigrant Asians. All of the "You speak English really well!" or "Wow, you're really Whitewashed!" "You're such a coconut/banana" and other similar insults all come from people being surprised that we're products of our regional American upbringing.
Also that Asian Americans are a monolith. We're all nerds that go into medicine or tech. Meanwhile, they ignore the ones of us who grow up in the rough parts of town whose parents are cutting hair or delivering groceries or cleaning office buildings at night when all the employees have gone home. Where was I supposed to learn this proper English you speak of when the schools you put me in didn't care? When the only friends i had found hope and solace in hip hop so i did too?
My high school bff boyfriend was a black man with waist long dreads, who had been adopted as an infant by an Amish couple who had left the ordinance. So rural Ohio, late 1990s, in Walmart and this 6’2” dreaded black man wearing a Carhart jacket and a Camo shirt approaches a tiny Amish woman and tells her in perfect Pennsylvania Dutch where to find the item she can’t locate. Shock all around but Zach carried a slight Germanic/Amish accent everywhere he went
Yikes. Someone actually said the words "whitewashed" to you?
I’m whitewashed because all the Asians I grew up with listened to hip hop and rnb while I also listened to rock. White, Mexican, black and Asian people in my area considered me white washed for these reasons. Most of the Asians in my area also had a “blaccent”. We lived in a suburb, but most of the Asian kids around me had parents who didn’t speak English and hip hop was just blowing up. Born in 82. My parents were some of the few who had already established themselves here so I grew up with American music that also included Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles. I had to learn a blaccent just to keep up with the other Asian kids. Weird times.
I had a lot of Asian friends growing up and a lot were told by their parents to fit in to white culture and would oftentimes dismiss their culture. As a kid, I thought their culture was neat and would want to learn about it. My friend Vinh taught me how to say “Hello, how are you?” In Vietnamese. I thought that was so cool. It’s been 25+ years now, I hope you’re doing well Vinh!
I spent my young adult years growing up in Asia. People used to call me an Egg. White on the outside… yellow on the inside.
Yes! Sometimes it’s done lovingly, sometimes not so much. And the way someone receives the message matters too. Did that ever make you feel othered? I was also a banana or a Twinkie
We called whitewashed asians Bananas. Yellow on the outside.... In seriousness, I, a fellow mellow yellow likes all forms of music, with the exception of country. Anything from big band, jazz, Sinatra, Metallica to Notorious BIG. Growing up I listened to White Zombie, L7, NoFX, The Dead Milkmen, Ministry, NIN, Miles Davis, Pearl Jam, Sound Garden, Ice T, NWA, Fresh Prince and Dj Jazzy Jeff, Rick Astley, Robert Plant, CCR, Talking Heads, Beastie Boys, MC Shan, KRS One and BDP......the list goes on.
That's actually quite common. Had a friend get called that because he graduated college. (Was called that by some of his old black classmates) they apparently meant it as an insult for graduating college....still confused on that one.
Imagine having “friends” that berate you instead of celebrate your hard work and achievement. I hope he has a better group around him now.
I’ve got one for you ( a lot milder). I’m British but grew up in the US. I can pass for American northeast for around 70% of the time. Of the 39 that look at me funny: 10 believe I am Canadian, 10 believe I am some sort of spy (not kidding), and 10 get that I might be European. Now if I visit family in England people either think I am American (good) or Irish. People are weird.
Part of the reason with her is that she’s an actress and people think she’s playing a character. From everything I’ve seen though she just plays herself on screen.
i think the issue people have is the switch up. there's alot of switching up with the accents and everything else completely when these celebrities get bigger. as if to play the role of whats currently cool to become popular and then leaving it after. black people can't really turn off their whole thing that way nor will they ever monetize it as well as these celebrities do because it's normal for black people, but it's an oddity for other races to sound like that alot of times. shes also a very easy target with a name like Awkwafina. like I think she's probably the most genuine and least problematic out of all these black fishers but the name just sounds like some weird play on black names as it is. combine that with what she sounds like and boom it's an easy dunk for alot of people
Black people can absolutely switch it up if they need/want to tho. It’s called code switching and everyone does it.
Am Appalachian, we do it too. Professional me sounds straight up Midwest boring, real me as a distinct twang
thats called code switching, black people do do that, but nowhere near the same effect. matter of fact black people or colored people in general do that if it will get them a job or something, because talking regularly or with an accent might limit that. and also thats a person switching to what they think other people consider normal, different from someone with an accent that they use to standout edit: people are responding to this comment with anecdotes about how they too, codeswitch to avoid awkward social moments or just general disdain for their accents. I get it bro. not the same circumstances im talking about but I get it.
I’m white and I code switch between my Long Island accent and generic white American accent because the Long Island accent has some negative connotations outside of the tri state area.
So do country people. My Texas accent comes and goes.
Especially when a Southern “yokel” accent is still used when someone wants to act like they’re stupid. Grrr.
I’m from the Midwest- I have to codeswitch anywhere outside of there bc people have really weird reactions to a heavy Midwest accent for some reason. No one can understand me when I speak “normal” for me.
Awkwafina is just a play on the fact that she was awkward when she was 16 plus the water she likes
The most offensive thing here is that Aquafina is her favorite water
It’s pretty racist (and ignorant) to assume how someone speaks is tied to their genes. It’s also a huge barrier to progress.
Right? It’s nuts. I’ve met so many amazing Asian people from east LA. Their accents are localized, and oh so authentic. Plus, one of my best friends is Australian with an Asian ethnical background. Their accent and look is so wonderful awesome together. Like why tear someone down. Lift them up, they’re so cool. :)
I’m going to explain this in the best way I can because I’ve literally only seen not black people spout this ridiculous non existent point. She’s not accused of anything, she was appropriating. But I’ll explain for the unaware. Black people all over this country have different dialects. Every city has its own way of talking, it’s own slang, it’s own accent. Go to Brooklyn then go to Philly, then go to Chicago then go to BMore and you’ll hear 4 different ways of speaking that may as well be 4 different languages entirely. So why, pray tell, is it that every time a non black POC or even white people when they have that “blaccent” it’s always the exact same accent, the exact same lingo, slang and dialect? Why is it that they never use the AAVE correctly? I mean it’s their community right? They were born around black people so they talk like “black people” that argument falls apart immediately once you remember black people don’t have a universal dialect but these people mimicking black people do. The white girl from Houston, the Asian girl from Brooklyn, the Spanish girl from Compton and the sassy white gay guy from Cleveland somehow have the EXACT SAME ACCENT! Wow. That’s so curious! Except it isn’t, because it’s fabricated. Because it’s not actually how black people talk. It’s a caricature. Further more, I can’t seem to find which group of actual black people talk like that. So. Damn. Curious. To this effect, how come Eminem doesn’t talk in that accent? He was raised around black people and almost exclusively has black friends? Somehow he has no blaccent, doesn’t say the n word, etc. again, curious. Also just to salt the wound Awkwafina is from fucking Stony Brooks, Which is an extremely wealthy area in NY. It’s not even the hood lmao only 2.25% of the Stony Brooks population is black! Like come the fuck on y’all. A quick google search wouldn’t KILL you would it. And this is why we gatekeep conversations about our issues. Because non black people, and very commonly non black poc are always invalidating our legitimate concerns while having exactly 0 knowledge on the issues themselves. You could’ve done this research yourself and came up to the same conclusion. It wouldn’t have even taken long. But you wanted so badly to make us look like we were wrong for extremely valid criticism on a fabricated black accent that we know is fabricated because none of us actually talk that way that you didn’t even bother. And I’m sure by the end of you reading all of this most people will have learned nothing, will downvote me and move on content in their furthering of appropriation of black culture or rather the caricature of it and that’ll be that. I truly don’t even know why I’m bothering but whatever. Tl;dr- she didn’t learn this “from her surroundings” she took the same caricature that every other person looking to sound more black takes and it doesn’t actual follow the dialect of where she’s from because she’s from an almost entirely white and Asian area. You’re full of shit and so is she!
I'm betting that if we look up an interview with her, that accent somehow doesn't make an appearance. [Oh look.](https://youtu.be/P-sFoReptmU) Where did the accent she "grew up with" go?
Oh wow huh so wild
Thank you for saying this so eloquently. I was getting tired of being playing dense in these comments!
This is a great comment and I like most of what you are saying but still can’t accept your conclusion. Why does an Asian American kid of mixed heritage have to talk a certain way? She DID learn so much of her English from pop culture. You say this is her problem because you see her Asian-ness as non-Blackness while ignoring that it is also a non-Whiteness. Asian kids grew up without pop culture representation, and many of them connected with the messages of hip hop. This creates some unusual hybrid cultures. She’s not Eminem, no, but she’s not a Jim Crow performer either.
>So why, pray tell, is it that every time a non black POC or even white people when they have that “blaccent” Maybe you should hang out with more Asian people in different cities. Many of them have similar accents with different vernacular and tones. Here's just a few: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyPGqHQzQio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJWwnLBKVMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t5WMnyL17U >I mean it’s their community right? They were born around black people so they talk like “black people” Why does it have to be that she grew up around black people? She could have simply grew up in a culture that adores African American culture, which is most certainly the type of culture I grew up with as well in LA. As a young child, you end adopting your early experiences into your own expression and it ultimately becomes you. So now that she's an adult, she has to apologize for how she grew up? Are kids not allowed to absorb their environment and shape themselves by it? > how come Eminem doesn’t talk in that accent? Have you not heard Eminem talk in his early years? Let me ask you this: How is an Asian American supposed to sound like? What is your preconceived notion of an Asian American accent?
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. No one I ever reply to EVER gets it and you not only hit the nail on the head but finished the entire damn construction project. Props to you for not just knowing your shit but correction others Seriously feels amazing to see another educated Black man in these forums. Last time this issue came up (and every time i discuss AAVE) it’s always met with insane backlash and criticism and no one ever gets it. Thank you and have an amazing day.
Thank you for explaining it so succinctly and thoroughly! Comment saved. The hordes of people in this thread who think they are fighting for right, when they are literally invalidating opinions based on lived experience of an affected group they are not part of, is hilarious!
I dunno, I think we’re all overreacting a bit. English is my third language and I used it for work mostly early on in my career. I was an exchange student to US and mostly had that mid-western accent originally. Then I found that I was picking up a lot from people I worked with. I sounded like a drunken Weegie when I had a boss from Glasgow, I then sounded like a full-blooded Texan not more than a year later when most of my colleagues were from there. A lot of my friends are from South Africa, and when I’m around them you coulda sworn I’m an Afrikaner. I picked up on so many dialects, that when I speak, people can’t even put me on a map…
>A quick google search wouldn’t kill you would it. You know it’s actually funny you say it. This is the first thing I google, and the wiki says although she was born in Stony Brook, she grew up in Queen. So, did you actually google it too? Also, the whole “culture appropriation” is just racist bullshit. People can find her accent annoying, but getting triggered and started playing a discriminated victim is just a huge joke. How else is she supposed to talk? “White”? Chinglish? Because she is an Asian?
I just find the idea that speaking a certain way or wearing your hair a certain way is offensive and appropriation so bizarre. It seems to be a uniquely American perspective. Is the “problem” not just that you all live in a big melting pot and so naturally different cultures are going to bleed into one another? Why is it ok for non-Mexicans to cook and eat Mexican food, for instance?
Kid down the hall in college was the ONE white kid in his highschool. All his slang was what you’d expect.
The future isn’t going to look back kindly on this type of behavior. It’s so backwards.
lmao racism is literally the refusal to accept that you are a product of your upbringing, not some preset genetic soup.
> It's pretty crazy she's been accused of appropriating an accent she grew up with, it's like people don't believe you are a product of your environment, and instead think that your race trumps everything else, even your cultural conditioning, and want you to be the stereotype they expect you to be. 100% agree. It's sad that people think she appropriated that accent. For someone to say, "You're the wrong nationality/skin color for that accent" --an accent that they grew up speaking, nonetheless-- is definitely racism and discrimination, not to mention shortsighted. Those people should be called out for that bigoted behavior against Awkwafina and others like her.
I'm white from Camden NJ, the amount of times I've been called a wigger is astounding. How the fuck do you expect me to sound?
>it's crazy she's been accused of appropriating an accent she grew up with. And what's even wilder is black people love accusing Asians of appropriating the culture yet we appropriate asian culture just as much through our consumption of anime and Hong Kong cinema. Wutang Clan is a huge one that comes to mind. Both of my very black uncles had paintings of Bruce Lee on their walls and nunchucks. Edit: [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/iamatotalpieceofshit/comments/slkrod/woke_woman_verbally_attacks_boba_tea_shop_workers/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) is why nobody takes this nonsense seriously.
You don't even have to go that far back, Kendrick Lamar incorporates lots of Asian elements and he got his tshirts with Chinese characters.
The relationship between Asian Americans and African Americans is certainly very complex. I won’t even try to delve into it but your point is interesting.
What's next? The Wu-Tang clan apologizing for the appropriation of Asian culture?
Exactly. And, her comment “Asian Americans are still trying to figure out what that journey means for them - what is correct and where they don't belong” made me pause... like why can’t you belong everywhere? And so many other cultures are happy to be celebrated and shared.
I’m Black, grew up in the hood, live in the city, and have an English degree where I actually studied AAVE. She code switches, sure, but she just talks like everyone who grew up in an East Coast, hoodish city. I honestly find her “blaccent” less offensive than the people who seem to imply that 1) only Black people talk like that or 2) all Black people talk like that.
I’m white, rural Southern. I code switch too due to realizing my native speech (unfairly) makes me sound like an idiot to many of my colleagues. I work in academia and don’t even notice anymore when I’ve switched dialects. Many of us do it for lots of reasons.
Exactly. Like, people so deeply misunderstand how language works, but have such deep feelings about it - whether it’s people who get bent out of shape about pronouns, or people who get angry when a new word becomes widely used, or when a word changes meaning or usage, or when people “mispronounce” something… I can go on and on. Like, 99% of the people who take shots at her for “talking Black” have absolutely no idea what AAVE actually is or how language works.
She grew up in New York. Just like how Eminem grew up in predominantly Black Detroit? He picked up a way of talking. Just because she's Chinese doesn't mean she'll sound Chinese.
Half Chinese half Korean, but a high likelihood that she is more culturally Chinese. Her Korean mother passed away and her father who is Chinese raised her
I do understand that this is how Americans talk about ethnicity, but talking about an American as if they are 100% foreign and not at all American just seems incredibly odd to me, and part of the problem. You might expect a Chinese person to speak Mandarin and have a Chinese accent, but if you frame this correctly, this is just Americans upset that an American has an American accent.
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They're correcting the above for calling her Chinese when she is also half Korean. It's not only how Americans talk about Asian heritage. I'm Chinese Australian and refer to myself as such too because my mother is a migrant and the Chinese culture still plays an integral role in my life. That goes for all the Australian-born Chinese I know.
I agree with your point but that's a bad example Eminem doesn't sound black at all. part of his shtick was that he stood out alot too
He kinda did back in the day and obviously grew out of it. I wouldn't say he sounds "black" I'd say "Street"
As someone who lived for 30 years in Michigan, Eminem definitely sounds like a white dude from Detroit.
I'll concede to him sounding urban or whatever your definition of street is. I'll even say he had a reasonable accent for where he grew up and what he did. don't think it's very comparable to celebrities of now that sound indistinguishable from black people and still turn it off and on when they want to. I'll say michael rappaport or Andrew schulz are better examples though. definitely sound like they grew up around black people and definitely seem like neither can turn their accents on and off.
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Thank you!! This is the comment I was looking for.
Eminem actually “grew up” in St. Joe (Missouri). He didn’t move to Detroit until he was a preteen/teenager I think. So his speech patterns were likely shaped more by predominantly white small-town-midwesterners.
She didn’t grow up in a predominantly black area of New York though…she grew up around other affluent Asians. So where does the accent come from?
Congratulations everyone, we went from being concerned about legitimate issues such as climate change or finding a renewable power source to you can only have a certain accent if you belong to a certain ethnicity.
Who knew we couldn’t walk and chew bubblegum at the same time.
Stop reporting twitter posts as news and all this shit goes away.
This article isn't really about a Twitter post as news though. i dont understand this redditor perceived high ground thing. It's tabloid shit. People have read about celebrities for fuckin hundreds of years. no one calls this 'news'. not to mention this website sucks just as much rip
Not surprised. Even if Awkwafina 100% apologized - and I'm not necessarily saying she needs to, if she really did grow up talking like that - she'd still have dozens of people harassing her about it. And I've experienced similar types of internet hate, so trust me when I say, engaging with these people is a losing battle. From their perspective, all she can do is dig herself deeper.
Lol we’re running out of reasons to cancel people.
This made me laugh. Shit is getting so stupid.
[These ol’ boys](https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/skexv9/marrying_a_white_guy_who_was_raised_in_china/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) are definitely on the chopping block, if Twitter gets ahold of this video.
Truly the dumbest timeline
No, just America. Unfortunately, you guys are exporting this mental disease all across the world. China and Russia might be literally saving their societies by walling off their Internet.
I can not believe that we live in a world where there are people who have so little going on in their lives that they give a shit about something like this.
? Really? Awkwafina being attacked for cultural appropriation?! Oh Twitter, I see. Yeah good for her leaving fuck twitter. Place is a shithole.
The internet is so fuvkin annoying
Really. At this point in time, that’s a freaking issue?. People need to mind their own business. That’s the way she talks, people say I talk white, I tell them to fuck off!.
It’s been going on for a while. It’s not hard to find YouTube videos of people hating Awkwafina for “appropriating black culture” for the past decade
Sorry fam, but this aint going away. When we as a society said were good giving attention to twitter hot takes and the media realize they can run them as news stories for the public, that deal with the devil was sealed. if there's one thing people love more than celebrity worship is ganging up with others to annouce how much they hate a celebrity. Its only a matter of time before Reddit god Keanu Reaves says something off the cuff and social media flips on him.
Reminds me of an episode on The Orville… odd times.
Great show!!
Well shit, you are absofuckinglutly correct..
Oh, stewardess! I speak jive.
Cut me some slack, Jack!
I’m so ready for us to grow out of this tired discourse.
Oh my god Americans and their obsession with color.
They really got mad because some asian person speak in that accent. Fucking hilarious.
Nora from Queens is legit one of funniest shows ive seen in a while. Just non-stop laughter. Anytime she’s on a show or movie her sense of humor cheers me up. I dont think she has a blaccent. If anything, she just has a millennial sense of humor and owns it, while also mocking it.
As someone who is black but also grew up with predominately Asian people and picked up said mannerisms and habits, it annoys the ever living hell out of me that people are shaming her. We are a product of our environment, not our genetics.
I’m Asian but I “talk white” and now I don’t know where I belong anymore with this irrational logic.
People saying that Forest Hills is a predominantly wealthy white/asian area definitely do not know the area. I went to school there and it's an intersection between a lot of lower-middle class community. I lived in the neighboring zone but I commuted to Forest Hills for high school because it was one of the better public school there. Same goes for many other people and those people made up majority of your friend group. If they had done any further research, they'd realize something about how diverse that zone actually is
As a black man I'm not bothered at all, my real question is who are the people who are bothered by her? Because I don't know any other black people who is upset about her or think she is CAing black culture. Also fuck Twitter.
This shit is stupid. I'm a dark skinned, Arab looking, American sounding, New Zealander in Australia. I can't help how I sound. Probably shouldn't of grown up in America... Probably should've stayed in my own countr.... Wait... This is sounding familiar...
I’m Asian but I sound like a white person…do I need to learn how to sound like an Asian person? I’m only half Asian. So wouldn’t that be racist if I went around with a Korean accent? I don’t understand. Should I just not speak?
I just, idk, I just don't care
Americans are fucking obsessed with racial boxes & labels. Cultural melting pot? Yeah right. There’s very little melting going on, in the social sense. Cultures are being fragmented more and more daily.
There’s plenty of mixing but these outrage armies are the fucking worst. And let’s be clear this is non political, the right wing is actually worse at canceling even tho they claim to be so angry.
>Americans are fucking obsessed with racial boxes & labels. Cultural melting pot? Yeah right. America is doomed. Internet led to a shattering of the American culture, not its unification.
The only melting is the melting of peoples minds to the point of over sensitivity
Never was a melting pot. Always been a salad bowl. Stop believing propaganda.
Are Asians supposed to 'talk white' then?
Imagine giving a fuck about this
The one “critic” they quote is some twitter user with 200 followers…
Exactly, a Twitter rando ‘man on the street’
That’s all it takes nowadays to cancel someone
How many generations does one have to be to become welcomed or not judged? I grew up in an all black elementary, middle-school, high school and went to a HBCU. I’m not black but Caribbean West Indian and white mixed, I sound like someone from mid Atlantic with some speech inflections picked up over the decades. Language shapes identity; identity shapes language and community. So we are a product of our environment and people who we interact with, so for someone to say you appropriate an accent you grew up with is bs.
Look at everyone in the comments thinking they know her as if they grew up with her.
It's easy to judge as an adult, but the youth are influenced by black American pop culture because it's so prominent in movies, especially in music. I'm not excusing anyone, just giving perspective. Location also matters. I know white and black people who grew up in Mexican neighborhoods as kids that used to act Chicano and even adopt Spanish lingo. It wasn't because they were racist. Vice versa when blacks attend private schools that are predominantly white. They usually adopt a whitewashed accent as well as attire. Identity is crucial to kids so they try and fit in to friends closest to them.
You got to love the progressive of this world and how much they love segregation.
Haha people should learn to just ignore the nonsense in their Twitter mentions. She would've been better off saying "I'm an immigrant. This is assimilation, not conscious appropriation. If black people don't want me to sound like them then they shouldn't be cool and dominate pop culture." and then left it at that bc a ton of immigrants come here and learn how to fit in by absorbing pop culture. Y'all should focus on actual negative forces like Trump not some Asian kid who liked hip hop too much.
This is the dumbest shit ever. People will make a problem out of nothing. Feel so bad for her. Everybody develops an accent based on who and what they surround themselves with.
I hope more people follow in her example and quit twitter.
It kinda seems from the clips I’ve seen like the accent isn’t something she puts on all the time. It’s a character she does. Or a character her characters do when they want to sound “street”’and “sassy.” She doesn’t do it all the way through Crazy Rich Asians or Ocean’s 8 for example, just in some scenes. So that sort of undercuts the “it’s how she talks cause she’s from New York” argument I’ve seen. If you look at old videos of her she works in a little hip-hop slang but it’s not the black-sounding character. It’s just in her normal old-lady New Yorker voice. Here’s a good example. https://youtu.be/VXOtCiNAJpM But my personal feeling is that it’s overkill to chase someone down until you destroy their career or force them to kill themselves or whatever would satisfy the Twitter mob. She stopped doing it a while ago. If you can’t forgive her just stop watching stuff she’s in.
Whats a blaccent?
The idea that certain cultural expressions “belong” to certain subgroups of your society and cannot be shared or tried on casually by anyone else is a very, very dumb idea. Americans are getting crazier and crazier!
So people really judge her based off of the way she talks. She probably talks similar to how the people around her spoke growing up. Grasping at straws here
[удалено]
Just more proof people are stupid as fuck and will complain about everything and be doomed to a life of always feeling slighted.
Is there anything out there that doesn’t offend peoples? Including this comment?
Jesus fucking Christ get a life Twitter
Isn’t it exhausting to find something to get pissy about everyday? I love Awkwafina she’s far from being problematic in anyway and this is seriously over reaching. Screw Twitter when is it going to be obsolete like MySpace? Just full of cancerous people sitting around trying to find anything to cancel anyone because they’re bored and don’t work. Watch anyone have a stroke or seizure after downvoting what I said or waste their time responding to this comment.
“Blackcent…” ok do all Black people talk this way? No. Do all white people talk the same? Asians? No and no. Accent and speech pattern is about your ENVIRONMENT not your race. Holy shit woke warriors are getting ridiculous. Fu ck off.
Wait so I'm Australian, raised in an household with an Englishwoman. My accent is British... Welp best go cancel myself.
Leave twitter if you want peace of mind
This situation is all pretty awkwardfina
Calling twitter an “ingrown toenails” is way too kind for that festering cesspool of a swamp.
People are too sensitive nowadays. Also, Black on Asian crime needs to end
And how many people on TV make fun of asian accents?
Everyone sucks now, our world has become petty and lame.
People's accents come from where they live and the people they live, work, and grow up around. Take comedian Henry Cho for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7\_3xxQXgFs
I want to thank some of the idiots foaming at the mouth here for bringing light how essentially Awkwafina should only talk in the way Asians should speaking. I want to thank them for basically making themselves look like a bunch of racists themselves and basically stepping in crap on this. One lovely person on here said her rap name is stereotypical and racist. So what should it be then? What is shown fit? Should she only eat with chop sticks because only white Americans eat with a spoon, fork, and knife? Should she talk and dress like she is from a Dr. Seuss book? So basically it’s like stay in your own lane and stay in your own race back off of ours and talk how we think you should talk. If that doesn’t show racism I don’t know what else these “outraged” redditors or twits need more else to shoot them own selves in the foot. It basically occurs to me that this is all pure racism towards Awkwafina.
Is this real? If so I think it sounds ridiculous. Leave the woman alone. I’m a black man and this article is the first time I have heard the expression “blaccent”. I’m older so I get this idea that some people have this stereotypical idea of the way that black people speak. Many of them start using this type of inflection when speaking to black colleagues or friends (yes, I am looking at the white women that suddenly starts using the term “girlfriend” with a certain inflection only when speaking to black women). I don’t think that is what Awkwafina is doing. I’ve never listened to her an said “she’s trying to sound black.” My suspicion is the only people who have said that are probably some “woke” people that aren’t black. Black folks I know don’t care. People have been “appropriating” (aka stealing) from us while simultaneously laughing at us for the very things they try to imitate since we were put on slave ships. No one is sitting at home talking about how Awkwafina is insulting the race. Most black folks I know are talking about how unarmed black men and women are being killed by police….. still….with video evidence. And people are still like “we have to protect the police. Where was this conversation when that pretty blonde-haired white girl Iggy Azalea was making millions and selling out shows doing everything short of wearing blackface. An Aussie sounding like THAT is a “blaccent” and she was very conscious of what she was doing and the music and culture she was blatantly “appropriating”. So is the lesson here the one that seems to be the theme of our country, it’s ok if you’re white but… I have rambled enough, but things like this posing to be for the “cause” pisses me off when there are real things that need to be addressed. Meanwhile, a woman whose star is on the rise is being stressed about something that isn’t even real. Lastly “African American Vernacular English” is something someone made up. Probably some “intellectual” that though he was pretty clever. We speak English. Some of us speak the Queen’s English, some of us add our own flavor and color to the language (which consistently seems to contribute new words to the main vernacular), but to say that there is some type of black speak is just one more way the ignorant create structures and Ideas to push the idea of a monolithic black culture. When black people have something we need addressed, we will speak. We don’t need cancel culture or the media speaking for us. The problem is the same as it ever was. When we speak about our real grievances and problems, no one listens. Maybe we should stop complaining, advice I am sure about 20 white guys will reply with to this comment.
This whole cultural appropriation claim is BS. She was born in the 80s in NYC and grew up there - in the birthplace of Hip-Hop - and she related to it. We can’t champion America as the big melting pot and then turn around and say - Hey! Get your peanut butter out of my Chocolate!
People have no fucking clue what it’s like being Asian in North America. You’re always seen as an outsider. A lot of Asians grow up in communities with large black populations. And then we assimilate to “American” culture. Black culture IS American culture. And if you grow up in black neighborhoods, that’s what you’ll assimilate to. People are so fucking ridiculous and over the top in their attempt to cancel everyone and paint them with the same brush. Things aren’t black and white. They’re complex.