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Oh Uh Uh: Spiritual Gangster Steals

Spiritual Gangster

Brands steal.

Odds are that your favorite brand has stolen something from someone. But in this day and age of social media and amplification, it is much easier to catch brands in mid-theft and call them out for their thievery.

Case and point, one of my faves, Francheska, aka HeyFranHey, soulful wellness guru, influencer, and sweetheart of The Friend Zone podcast, drops the gems wherever she goes because, well, she's just dope like that. Unfortunately, appreciative listeners aren't the only ones who pick up on these gems.

Spiritual Gangster, cultural appropriator by name and apparently in their deeds, swiped Fran for a saying she has been well known and documented for saying to make a raggedy sweatshirt of it.

Without ever even contacting Fran or even quoting her for saying her own saying.
Spiritual Gangster
She got wind of the theft and called out the brand on Twitter. Apparently, the brand has not commented on the theft (because why would they.)
The saying has long been in the bio of her Tumblr page!

Other Twitter users even noted that the saying belongs to her.





That is called stealing. 

Unfortunately, because this saying was not within a published or copyrighted work, Fran has no legal case against Spiritual Gangster.

Worst of all, the item sold out. Meaning there are probably a bunch of women wandering from their yoga studio to Whole Foods, top knot, and big sunglasses-clad, donning this phrase across their chests created by a woman of color, and that woman of color won't reap the benefits of her own words.

Sounds about white right.

This theft from a brand that is, from its name alone, appears to be so desperate to appear "cool" and "edgy" that it is willing to align itself with Blackness (by appropriating the term "gangster" and then stealing from Black creatives) without benefitting the communities it is so willing to align itself with.

It is a desperateness that we see not solely in this brand, but from White Culture, aka Popular Culture, in its general standing with Black Culture. After all, Black people create culture (if you don't believe me, look at every form of American music and see if you can find one, ONE, that was not first started by a Black person). We see it in the erasure of Blackness from elements of our own culture that are as authentically Black as the people they come from, like Bantu knots being appropriated into mini buns, cornrows appropriated into boxer braids, the "sudden" interest in high ponytails, slicked edges, bamboo earrings, the majority of the popular dance moves of today, and so on and so forth. Almost everywhere you look, one can find cultural theft by popular culture from Black culture, elements that are so inextricably linked to Blackness being stripped of that Blackness for accessibility for and appealability to Whiteness.

Remember in Sir Mixalot's song Baby Got Back, how the two women at the beginning of the booty shaking classic were very grossed out by a Black Woman's very large posterior. Now, white women are dying (figuratively and literally) getting butt implants and squatting their asses off (pun intended) in the gym.

My how things have changed. Or as another Black creative, Naresha Williams, calls it, "ghetto until proven fashionable".

Unfortunately, this is another example of that cultural theft. The good news is that Spiritual Gangster has been called out and effectively canceled by Black Women. Thus the culture they attempt to steal from. Therefore, the overall cancelation should be trickling down soon, after all, where Black culture goes, White culture isn't too far behind.
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