(it’s real)

You know what’s a funny, fair and humane bit about #cultural appropriation that’s probably not recognized as such? Charlie Murphy’s “skins vs. blouses” bit from The Chappelle Show.

The conceit being that Murphy and a bunch of dark skin Brooklyn/LA guys go all confident into a basketball match against the light skinned Minnesotan Prince and get their asses handed to them.

Of course, as Canadian Heritage Minutes (and Hoosiers) documented, basketball was a Canadian’s invention long respected as an off-season sport in the hockey belt, and its association with inner-city American blackness comes from the (white) Progressive Era “Playground Movement” promoting it as particularly suited to the space-cramped northern inner cities that the Great Migration would later fill.

So then he was like “damn” and didn’t renounce the sport, but walked off a bit humbled with new respect, and if only we could all say the same.