i hate how preachy(?) some people are

to clarify, i am a black girl myself. i know this is a black-exclusive space, but i have to clarify this because i feel what i am about to say could come off the wrong way if i don't enunciate it properly (and i already feel like i should've listened to my gut). i will be focusing on two (and a half) examples here.

so there's this one tiktok account that i keep getting on my feed. while i do agree with the sentiment of wanting more people to embrace and learn to care for their natural hair and they do raise some good points about how women in asia are exploited for human gair wigs and the health risks of relaxers, i dislike how they kind of villify people who wear wigs/straighten their hair, to the point of derisively labeling them as "wig warriors". it somewhat reminds me of people who bully fat people to "encourage" them, because what's the point of shaming people to persuade them, especially if you claim they're doing it out of insecurity? some people straighten their hair simply for the sake of convenience as well. additionally, i personally wear my natural hair and i do like it. another example of this was under a post of a girl who said that she wanted to make her slickback look neater without gel because she wanted to reduce the products, which is a good move in my opinion. however, i saw some people in the comments going on about how using gel supposedly means you "hate your hair" and "won't embracing your natural features".

my next example is that of an instagram post by a major news publication in my country covering a local anime convention. while the comments were correcting the publication (they mistakenly said the convention was "chinese"), there were a few that stood out to me.

they were along the lines of statements such as "why don't we create our own stories and comics instead of embracing people who hate us", "these people are rejecting/don't know their culture" when a lot of black nerds/weebs are aware of the racism that happens in their spaces and the negative portrayal they receive in the media, and criticize it.

also, you have a lot of black anime fans and nerds who ARE artists and writers and create their own stories, such as the well-known aaron mcgruder, the creator of "pretty please i don't want to be a magical girl" and the creators of the "static shock" comics. in fact, there is a jamaican anime-styled animated project in the works.

people enjoying anime and embracing their culture are not mutually exclusive things as they can do both. i even saw a comment that went as far as to mention the suicide of a black cosplayer who was bullied for cosplaying frieren (rest in peace), and claiming she was "bullied by asians" when that was NOT the sole group that was bullying them. many of the black people in the cosplaying space were quick to call out these bullies as well. lying about a person's cause of death, even if it were a minor detail and using it to back up your point is scummy to do.

now this post is not to say i wholeheartedly disagree with these people, it's just that i simply dislike the execution of their messages. the best way i can summarize my feelings is through this popular homelander meme, where it is captioned along the lines of "when someone has an opinion you agree with, but the way they express it makes you want to disagree". i dislike how these people hold a caricature of the people they disagree with, and treat people liking and doing the things they like and embracing their blackness as mutually exclusive things. i admit that this is a very controversial and inflammatory take, but hopefully it's understandable.