When rapper Megan Thee Stallion released her first solo-single of 2021—“Th*t S***”—many eagerly anticipated the next viral hot-girl-anthem dance to the song on TikTok. However, a scroll through the official sound would reveal disappointing results, with half-hearted lip syncs and freestyled dances. In June of this year, Black creators boycotted the dancing app, making their absence felt. Tired of being left in the dust while their white counterparts danced their choreographies to stardom, Black TikTokers spotlighted the issue of cultural appropriation on the app. With this strike, many hope to establish crediting as a norm.

Not the First Time nor the Last

On March 27, TikTok personality Addison Rae appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to perform a handful of viral dance routines. Following the upload, both the TV show host and the 20-year-old faced backlash for not crediting the Black TikTokers behind the dances. Attempting to placate his viewers, Fallon invited the original creators to his show, citing their TikTok profiles in the description box of the video.

With this controversy, Black TikTokers find themselves questioning why it takes public outcry for credit to be given where it is due, especially considering that this is not the first time this has happened. Earlier this year, Charli D’Amelio—dubbed the “Queen of TikTok” with over 120 million followers to date—came under fire when she did the “Renegade” dance without mentioning the 14-year-old Black teenager who created it—Jalaiah Harmon. Indeed, D’Amelio became so closely associated with the dance that she, along with Rae, was invited to perform it during the 2020 National Basketball Association (NBA) Slam Dunk Contest. However, when The New York Times wrote a feature introducing Harmon as the choreographer, the white TikTokers faced much criticism, with the NBA ultimately giving Harmon flowers as an apology.  

Why Getting Credit Is Important

It should go without saying that all creators should be credited for their work. That, however, is just the “surface issue,” says Professor Patricia Davis, a cultural studies and race scholar and professor at Northeastern University. “Crediting someone’s work,” she says, “Is not only an issue of fairness, but a sociopolitical issue as well. There’s a long history of Black art being taken from the Black community into the so-called mainstream by white artists who were able to leverage their whiteness as currency to take someone else’s art and acquire money and fame off of it, while the original creators were not able to receive those benefits.”

Indeed, many point out how non-Black creatives like the D’Amelio sisters have become immensely successful at the expense of Black creators, from whom they borrowed dance routines from daily. Indeed, the pair has their own streaming show on Hulu and has received opportunities to go on live national television, with brand and sponsorship deals to boot. In 2020, Forbes named Addison Rae and Charli D’Amelio number one and two respectively on their list of TikTok’s Highest Earning Stars.

While some TikTokers like Rio Raab, the choreographer to Chris Brown’s “Take You Down” dance, are more sympathetic towards the stars—as "most times the popular creators don't see the original either, they usually see another popular creator do it”—others are less so. In a Buzzfeed article, Bryan Sanon, the creator of the *100 Racks Challenge*, believes that big content creators are simply "not doing their research." He believes that many intentionally “play dumb...People start asking questions and they [respond,] 'Hmm? I don't know' ... and it's like, 'No, this is from over here.”

Sanon’s skepticism is understandable, considering that there oftentimes is “some sort of implicit knowledge on the part of those doing the appropriating...they can do whatever they want with no repercussions to themselves because they are essentially stealing from people who are socially powerless,” as Professor Davis notes. Indeed, when TikTok personalities appropriate material from Black creators, they perpetuate a cultural tradition in the United States (U.S.) wherein the message being sent to African-Americans is one where their pop cultural creations—their music, dances, and attitudes—are appreciated but not the individuals themselves. And, “in the face of intensifying hate speech and actions and threats to African American peoples’ very lives, it makes it that much more of a problem,” Professor Davis notes.

Moving Forward: Turning Crediting into the Norm

While the issue of cultural appropriation is one that cannot be resolved immediately, what people can do in the present is call out those who appropriate other peoples’ work. This is because when there are social and material penalties to appropriating without attribution, people will be less inclined to do so. Moreover, TikTok has its own role to play—the app can tweak its algorithm to better accommodate its Black users. On the app, the “original” video pops up first and is recorded with the sound already embedded. For videos that are not labelled the “original,” the creators must choose the sound, running the risk of their video getting lost in the sea of other replications and losing out in the popularity contest, as the most popular videos appear next to the “original” video. Ensuring that the original creator’s dance video is noticed is something the app must work on.

On the part of the app’s users, crediting needs to become the norm—as Sanon says, “Don’t do the challenge and not do the research. Likening giving credit to making citations in the world of academia, Sanon and other Black creators merely want to be recognized for their hard work. As Black TikToker Taylor Cassidy posits, “We need to give these Black creators the bread, the money, the career, the agency, the management, the commercialization, the acting opportunities, and the flight to L.A,” all of which they deserve and more.