Oh, definitely!
A petition to President Obama, Loretta Lynch and Al Sharpton is demanding that Justin Timberlake be held criminally responsible for “cultural theft of black community.”
“Justin Timberlake has made a career out of culturally appropriating his music, looks, and just about everything else from the black community,” states the Change.org petition, which was written by a man named Bill Ellison.
“This should be a crime and it needs to stop,” it continues. “It’s okay for white artists to appreciate black music, but they shouldn’t do black music. This is racism and white privilege out of control.”
Yes — it should be a crime. Justin Timberlake should be able to be in actual legal trouble for making the music he makes, and it’s definitely such an important issue that President Obama should drop everything else he’s doing and handle it immediately.
Now, the petition had only 52 signatures at the time of publication of this article — but some of the comments that those signers wrote show that many of them consider this a to be a very serious issue indeed:
“Obama needs to stop this,” wrote Christine Rizzo.
“[C]ultural appropriation should be illegal,” wrote Matthew Laurence.
“I like Justin’s music, but he owes black people money,” wrote Allison Smith.
And perhaps, most intense of all:
“Justin Timberlake makes a career out of cultural appropriation,” wrote David Fuentes. “He deserves to be deported.”
Yikes.
— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.