hypervocal:

“We don’t mean to offend you by calling you racist.”

Two slam poets with Brave New Voices deliver this fearless indictment of hipster cultural appropriation and all its collateral damage. 

Follow HyperVocal on Tumblr for more.

I found out about Youth Speaks and Brave New Voices when I entered college— sad I didn’t have access to the poetry programs geared toward empowering young people through witnessing and writing words. I’ve been trying to channel my past writing and speaking the written word through Konversation, and seeing this video feels like a convergence of a lot of what Browntourage is about. The Youtube comments on this post are super critical of the way these young women meet race and privilege with anger and frustration. My question- why the hell not? It isn’t simply that they hate white people, they disagree with the fact that white people can appropriate customs and imagery into their privilege, when POC carry the same customs/imagery with none of the cute, frilly perks. Not that we want perks, we just want to be recognized for our ancestry the way the stories have unfolded, not in the pages of an Urban Outfitters lookbook. I don’t want to speak too much on the matter because I think they spoke pretty eloquently. All in all, youth spoken word programs are close to my heart and Brave New Voices has empowered a crew of amazingly intelligent people I hope to see changing the world.

-H