“Kloss took the boots’ down-home vibe and ran with it,” Vogue Magazine reports in reference to white Super Model Karlie Kloss’s wearing Timberland boots with jeans and a white t-shirt which something Black folks have been doing for years. The most blatantly racist statement and wording when they wrote, “down-home vibe” is this a dog whistle to say “urban” or some other loaded coded language that means Black or person of color? I think it was definitely the editor’s decision to use this coded language to insinuate a “down-home vibe” meaning a more niggerish tone to her aesthetic. White folks need to chill out with the Black cultural consumption with little to no reverence for the bodies who created the culture they so readily steal. They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but there is nothing in that statement that suggests the erasure and total disregard of the person who was imitated. This is exactly the skill that white folks have mastered.

They so readily flip, twist, and skew Black cultural products and repackage them for white consumption effectively assuaging the white gilt about the thievery of said products. One such way white folks skew things is there usage of benign neglect or willful ignorance to lay claim to things already discovered. For example, I was watching a clip on social media about white folks discovering the hood’s classic delicacy the “chopped cheese.” What is a chopped cheese you ask? It is ground beef diced with or without onions and American cheese served on an aged roll from the corner bodega or Aki (the colloquialism for New York City corner stores own and operated by Muslim brothers of Middle-Eastern ancestry hence the shortening of the Arabic name Akbar to Aki) store.

The white woman acted much how I would imagine Christopher Columbus and Conquistadors did when they pretended to discover an already inhabited land. She raved and ogled over the sandwich and was completely enamored by the simplicity and ingenuity of Black and Brown folks to create seemingly new dishes out of run-of-the-mill hamburger meat. The egregious act was not in the “discovery” of the sandwich as much as it is the implications of exposing the sandwich to other white people. The lady in the video was at a hood famous sandwich spot in East Harlem not too far from where I reside. To my knowledge there is but one for sure spot to find the sandwich which is in THE HOOD’S OF NEW YORK CITY! If the sandwich can only be found in the hood that means more white folks in the hood coming to consume and take like they normally do. With more white folks in the hood buying chopped cheese sandwiches the more likely chance there is of storeowners boosting the price of the sandwich.

If the price of the sandwich is boosted the storeowners are saying in no uncertain terms that they are now catering to their new clientele. If corner storeowners are catering to their new clientele they will alienate their patronage base. If they alienate their patronage base then that will cater to the Black and Brown folks and consider their needs and take into account their loyalty? Eventually white folks will get hip to this preferential treatment and then consider the neighborhood as a whole and not just the corner stores as a locale to frequent. If white folks like the neighborhood they will eventually sniff-out housing being that they can more easily afford the going rates for rents in the hood. Now we see something so seemingly benign as the “discovery” of a “new” sandwich go from eating a new food in an unfamiliar neighborhood to full blown gentrification. This is why white folks need to chill because their thievery and consumption of Black and Brown folks cultural products 10 times out of 10 leads to the  erasure and eradication of Black and Brown folks as the producers. No credit will be given and no financial compensation will be paid. If white folks don’t chill they will become Black and Brown folks effectively consuming the Black identity and textbooks will read about the great white Pharaohs and Queens with white faces… my bad they’ve already done that! SMFH!!!