#and claiming that they have transcended kpop by being accepted by the US

[commajade]

just some thoughts about race and kpop on a structural level:

i’ve already said this before but kpop is like The best litmus test for looking at the Republic of Korea’s status as a neocolonial territory of the U.S. empire. 

korea is racist because the formation of korean conceptualizations of race were predicated by U.S. imperial influence. of course there was classism and colorism in korea already but the idea of a white race defining itself against the other and then colonized countries having to define themselves within a western nationalist paradigm didn’t exist until colonization. kpop is completely built on the theft of Black artistry because the entirety of commercial music on a global scale is based on theft and appropriation of Black artistry as led by the U.S. and other colonizers. i’m thinking here of how certain latin genres of music are seen as national and represented with white/mestix figures when they specifically came from afrolatinx or afrocaribbean communities and then were nationalized. but anyway it’s barely hyperbole when my friends say that all music is Black. 

but it’s been naturalized to see white appropriation of these marginalized aesthetics and see white artists taking credit for Black sounds. when it’s kpop, it makes it even starker and more uncomfortable because it’s not the status quo but an aspirational kind of racism in which the colonial collaborator is trying to contribute to the project of colonialism in hopes of being more accepted by the colonizing powers. and in turn, white americans get a scapegoat and get to point at kpop and korea as a more racist backwards country that should modernize and catch up the U.S. in terms of progressive racial ideals. 

south korean corporate antiblackness (which then trickles down the cultural landscape as whole which is why you get so many racist hairstyles in seoul) is a method of the colonial collaborator endearing itself to the colonizer. it’s the same thing with that gina rodriguez controversy where people were talking about how nonblack poc cash in antiblackness because the backlash makes white ppl accept them more. but anwyay shinee has been relatively less racist in their concepts partially because they genuinely respect Black art more than the average idol but also because of racism! their romantic soft boyfriend image has lead to less ca because it’s oppositional to Blackness in the colonial eye. it’s no surprise that as soon as they’re being properly backed properly by sm and doing a kind of “fresh new image” promotion campaign the racism came out. i am very very disappointed about those recent teasers but it’s like an inevitable thing, no one is exempt because the whole structure is racist. just like the south korean government! and essentially how the whole world works on a socioeconomic and historic level!