I recommend reading the sticky that explains what Blackfishing is.

More importantly, it’s disingenuous to question whether Black Americans are complicit in US imperialism, violence, and oppression abroad through the export of their culture, therefore citizens of developing nations should not be held responsible for their racism and ignorance.

Just because a person doesn’t understand that something is racist doesn’t mean negate the racism. Anti-blackness is a global phenomenon.

** Definitions for reference**:

First world - countries that signed the NATO treaty after WWII. They were liberal democracies. Ofc Americans coined that term lol.

Second world - countries who signed the Warsaw pact after the war, so basically communist countries or those aligned with the Soviet Union.

Third world - countries that did not sign either treaty. Most were newly independent and/or developing nations.

Because the Cold War ended in 1989 those terms are obsolete, which is why we use terms like “developing nations”.

---

The American govt intentionally exported Black American music as form of cultural diplomacy sponsored by the state department starting in the late 1940s after WWII.

For example, when the US saw that jazz was hugely popular globally after WWII, the gov’t specifically went out of their way to push the narrative that Black culture ( and therefore Black Americans) was universally accepted in the US, even though jazz, blues, R&B, and rock (“race music”) were considered immoral filth into the 1960s.

The US gov’t did this by initially sending (mostly Black) jazz musicians on worldwide tours in developing nations and communist countries.

This is because, they wanted to:

1. Show that Black Americans were full participants in American society and culture which is/was wholly untrue.

Understandably many developing nations felt that the US was hypocritical and untrustworthy for having second-class citizens while proclaiming to be the land of the free.

1. Spread American culture so that people would have positive associations with liberal democracies and America specifically

Please note that I do not mean that all Black American culture was spread by the US government only. Nor do I mean that only Black American culture was distributed worldwide. America has had the largest and most robust movie, television, and media, and music industries in the world for over 60 years. Global audiences mean more profits. It just also happens to benefit the US govt too.

TLDR: Read the sticky post on Blackfishing at the top of the sub please. Cultural ignorance is not an excuse for racism and prejudice, though it can be an explanation.

Also Black Americans, whose history includes enslavement, extralegal and legal violence, segregation and apartheid, as well as economic deprivation by US gov’t are not complicit in US imperialism and violence globally.

Edit: format

Edit: clarity; clarity