Hoop earrings are racist.
That’s what a group of students at Pitzer College in Los Angeles, Calif., say. Describing itself as comprised of “women of color,” the group wrote on a wall devoted to free speech: “White Girl, take off your hoops.” The group says “black and brown folks” are exploited by the cultural appropriation when white women wear hoop earrings.
After one student was confused by the message, Alegria Martinez, Jacquelyn Aguilera, and Stefania Gallo-Gonzalez addressed the school in emails explaining the “artwork,” the Daily Mail reports.
Martinez wrote: ‘The black and brown bodies who typically wear hooped earrings, (and other accessories like winged eyeliner, gold name plate necklaces, etc) are typically viewed as ghetto, and are not taken seriously by others in their daily lives.
‘White people have actually exploited the culture and made it into fashion,’ she added.
The Claremont Independent added that Martinez said: “The art was created by myself and a few other WOC [women of color] after being tired and annoyed with the reoccuring [sic] theme of white women appropriating styles … that belong to the black and brown folks who created the culture. The culture actually comes from a historical background of oppression and exclusion. …We wonder, why should white girls be able to take part in this culture (wearing hoop earrings just being one case of it) and be seen as cute/aesthetic/ethnic.”
For the record, hoop earrings go back to the days of ancient Egypt and beyond. They’re sold in every jewelry store everywhere. While some hip hop artists wear them, so do women attending fancy events.
And now, the students who sent the e-mailing calling for white girls to stop wearing hoop earrings “are denouncing a campus newspaper for publishing their comments,” the National Review writes.
Three Pitzer College students are slamming a school newspaper, the Claremont Independent, for publishing an article about their crusade against white girls wearing hoop earrings after people on the Internet attacked them for their opinion. …
They, themselves, decided to make their opinions public. They made this decision repeatedly by taking multiple actions to ensure that their views on hoops reached a large audience. And now — now! — they’re mad at a school publication for covering them. Earlier this month, three of the women — including the two women who had written the e-mails — wrote a post for LatinoRebels.com accusing the Independent of having put “young women of color in danger” by writing a piece about the controversy.
The post claims that it “seems that [the Independent’s] writer has released students’ emails and identities to a larger community.” Now, the article did identify two of the women by name: The women who willingly sent out those e-mails on the issue with their names attached to them. I have seen no proof that the writer actually did release anyone’s e-mail address, and it seems that the authors of the post haven’t either, seeing as they qualified their accusation with “it seems that” rather than stating it outright.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
