"Black Lifestyle": my two cents

this post contains part of reaction to a link that went out on a college email list i'm still lurking on.  for some reason i didn't want to post my opinion there.  and yet i'm posting it on my blog for even MORE people to see.  the things i do don't make sense sometimes.

watch this video and see my response (edited some to make more sense) below.

It's strange to me that the people who replied to this on the list didn't have anything more noteworthy to say than "oh, this is cool."  People are generally so opinionated on other topics but it seems like this one did not strike the same chords, and I'm not sure why.

The first thing that came to mind when I watched this video was "Everything but the Burden," a reading I had to do for an African American Studies class on R&B.  I like that aspects of black culture can be appreciated in Japan, just as Japanese culture is appreciated and embraced by some black people over here (myself included).  But the fact that they reduce "black lifestyle" to "black women look good in these short outfits" or "I got frizzy hair when I was younger" or "I find black artists cool" is troubling.  There's no interest in black history, the struggles of the past and the present, anything of that sort.  Conversely, many of the people I know who are interested in Japanese culture have a much deeper interest than just anime, J-pop, and video games.  Why can't this profound appreciation be reciprocated?  Or if it is reciprocated, why do we never really hear about it?

Maybe I should just be happy that someone thinks highly of black women in some capacity, even if it's fairly superficial.  I don't know.  In any case, as a future doctor I can't condone the statement that tanning beds aren't harmful for the skin.