This week, Awkwafina took it upon herself to piss everyone off again by giving a non-apology for her flagrant use of “blaccent” — a manner of speaking meant to stereotypically mimic African American dialect. What makes it worse is, she said everything we need to know about her by saying what amounts to a bunch of nothing.
From the depths of her phone’s Notes app, Awkwafina tweeted out four screenshots of her vague explanation of why she built a career off her blaccent. For five paragraphs, the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings actress delved into the “sociopolitical context” of her imitating Black dialect most of her career. She said that she sympathized with Black people being culturally colonized by American institutions, and pointed out how the ubiquity of hip-hop and Black culture helps blur the line between pop culture and offensive appropriation. After telling us what we all have known for a while now — that America loves to take from Black culture — Awkwafina finally spends a few sentences explaining how she never meant to mock, belittle, or be unkind to anyone with anything she’s ever done. And then she played the race card.
