can someone please explain what's so problematic about her sometimes looking Asian/not white. girl can't help her face or facial features. i dont understand what is offensive about it
I also want to say something about this. I’m a white woman and explaining so a person of colour doesn’t have to labour over it.
The issues with “black fishing” are multi faceted, and it’s great to ask because when you get it, you can explain to others.
Jordan is a white woman. This means she has a lot of privileges. These include, statistically, higher paying wages, better healthcare, less chance of experiencing violence, less chance of drug dependency, more chance of lenient prison sentences amongst many, many other privileges. People of colour still experience a lot of systematic racism, where it is so “normal” we don’t even realise it and it’s leaked into other systems, like healthcare. They also experience a lot of dead on racism.
When Jordan manipulates her face and skin tone to look racially ambiguous, she is capitalising on the current climates of support for people of colour (black lives matter, multi-racial ad campaigns etc) because she doesn’t look white. People looking at her think she has a different racial background. This means she capitalises on those opportunities and supporters, without having experienced the hardships of being a person of colour.
Also, when she takes work, or support, because she looks racially ambiguous, she is taking that support or money away from an actual person of colour. So she is actively feeding into the system where “white people get a better deal” and further suppressing people from other ethnic backgrounds and taking their opportunities. Opportunities Jordan would not necessarily have as a white woman. You see the problem?
Ontop of this, some of the things she has been doing are considered racist (Google the fox eye trend). Others, such as some of her hairstyles, copy protective styles from black cultures and are considered cultural appropriation. A lot of braids, twists and beading can have religious or cultural meaning in black communities and so using them when you’re not from the culture and don’t understand the meaning is hurtful to people of that culture. On top of that, hairstyles have great cultural meaning for black communities and they are not just there for white people to take as they please (just be grateful if they are shared, aka a black friend does your hair for you, or you pay a black hair stylist).
Some people do look racially ambiguous. From birth. It happens. 3 years ago Jordan looked like she sipped pumpkin spice latte’s in her Ford Ka and was undeniably white. The manipulation of her ethnicity is the problem.
Hopefully this explains things and you can appreciate the issues moving forward!
