ABSTRACT
These two epigraphs point to a longstanding conundrum in cultural studies-the appropriation of Black cultural forms by non-Black people. One reason for the perplexity surrounding Black cultural borrowing is the haunting stereotype of the inferiority of African ancestry. For Smitherman, when Black cultural forms such as African American Language cross over, the experiences of the creators of the form are sanitized, divorced from their painful yet resilient cultural context, or disunderstood. “Black cultural forms” is here taken to mean sociocultural practices forged from existing African ideologies and practices and those that people of Black African descent encountered, developed, and/or appropriated in the context of negotiating life in European-dominant societies. As Mitchell indicates: if Black folks originated Hiphop and rap and others take up these expressions, they are no longer simply African American.
