I downvoted you because of the sentence "Because if you didn't, you REALLY need to shut it and keep your ideas out of their mouths.".
The point you rised at "Serious question. Did you ask these black artists?" is a valid, reasonable point that merits discussion.
But the point raised by the parent post is also a valid, interesting point that merits discussion. And that point raised a valuable discussion EVEN IF they did not "ask these black artists", and if we put this bar and demand them to shut it, that's a bad thing for the discussion.
So in my view you made an insulting demand for someone to "shut it" without reasonable grounds to do so, and this definitely deserves a downvote or five. I'm not asking you to "shut it", you should participate in this discussion, but in a civil manner that also allows posts like the parent post to participate in the discussion even if they don't meet your demands.
I absolutely did because in my experience a lot of people do this all too often, and it warrants an immediate reaction. I will gladly apologize if I am wrong, but it seems like most people here don't understand the harm that "non-black people speaking for black people" causes. It is SIGNIFICANTLY more rude and harmful than my tone here.
I apologize for nothing; it is most everyone else here that needs to do better.
What really causes harm is when you divide people up into groups based on arbitrary characteristics (like skin color) and treat those characteristics like they're the sole defining aspect of each person's identity, like you're doing right now.
Framing this as "non-black people speaking for black people" carries the implicit assumption that all black people have the same/similar opinions; that an arbitrary black person would be able to meaningfully "speak for [all] black people" in a way that an arbitrary non-black person can't. That's wrong.
The previous commenter making an educated guess based on personal experience with zero concrete data points is only slightly worse than making that same guess based on one concrete data point, and neither situation would be justification for telling anyone to "shut it" or "do better" in my opinion.
Wrong. Just wrong. And to people who look like me, harmful.
Now to be specific, I didn't make any generalizations about black folks, I was telling others not to. But, even if, I'm still pointing out a specific issue that I can observe and give other examples of, and you cannot "both ways" it. White people making presumptions about what black people think is more harmful than black people making presumptions about what black people think.
This owes to the fact that frequently -- said white person will only be talking to other white people and now you've cut black folks out of the conversation. Black people talking about each other is much different. Skin in the game.
The point you rised at "Serious question. Did you ask these black artists?" is a valid, reasonable point that merits discussion.
But the point raised by the parent post is also a valid, interesting point that merits discussion. And that point raised a valuable discussion EVEN IF they did not "ask these black artists", and if we put this bar and demand them to shut it, that's a bad thing for the discussion.
So in my view you made an insulting demand for someone to "shut it" without reasonable grounds to do so, and this definitely deserves a downvote or five. I'm not asking you to "shut it", you should participate in this discussion, but in a civil manner that also allows posts like the parent post to participate in the discussion even if they don't meet your demands.