Help Appreciating Black Music Without Appropriating It

Conversations about how to suck less — aka <a href="https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/what-white-people-can-do-for-racial-justice-f2d18b0e0234" rel="noopener">how to be actively anti-racist</a>, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, anti-transphobic (and so much more!) — can sometimes be tricky to navigate. People in marginalized groups are often asked to do a lot of unpaid labor to explain these issues to their friends, schools, and colleagues. So I figured one thing I could do with various consenting guests on my new podcast <a href="https://www.racheljkrantz.com/help-existing-podcast" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Help Existing</a> is to delve into the specifics of a wide array of questions. This week’s topic —<a href="https://www.racheljkrantz.com/help-existing-podcast" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank"> how to appreciate Black music when you’re not Black</a>, without appropriating it — seemed like a good place to start. I spoke with <a href="https://evettedionne.com/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Evette Dionne, author of Lifting As We Climb</a>, and a pop culture critic who often writes about Black music. Together, we delved into the central question of<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/help-existing/id1623414700" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank"> whether a person who is not Black can listen to, twerk,</a> or otherwise dance to Black music in any way that’s not somehow problematic. <a href="https://momentum.medium.com/help-appreciating-black-music-without-appropriating-it-865123026c0f">Visit Now</a>