That's a pretty common thing, you know. Very rarely will background characters in a music video speak or display their personality, even when they're white.

Ya...I feel like those mummy things are just weird. I did not think black woman caricature. I thought Real Housewives or Jersey Shore.

There is no line. Madeline's argument appears to be that white people are only permitted to sing about "white person stuff", whatever that means in our multi-racial society.

I would've never put 2 and 2 together about the mummy's with big butts unless someone explained it to me. I'm sorry but at some point if you see that and think "black people" maybe you're the one with the problem.

Jezebel needs ad revenue from clicks and outrage brings clicks.

LOL at never seeing white women with braids. You haven't been on a college campus recently, huh?

Honest question: What would it look like to "pay homage to a culture that you didn't grow up in" in a way that's NOT cultural appropriation? I totally get that Katy Perry and others have done a lot gross stuff, but I do also wonder how/where we draw the line.

I also love that every time I change his diaper his first move is to grab his junk.

If you're a bad liberal for making this comment then scoot over; I'm getting in the boat because (as a liberal) I agree wholeheartedly.. :o)

Maybe I'm just a bad liberal on this, but "cultural appropriation" criticisms are typically bullshit. Why can't someone be inspired by other cultures and use it to influence their own art?

Interesting. An article posted earlier today on Jezebel sang the praises of a young white man dressing up in the same way that Perry gets flak for.

I think we all know what the real problem is: nosy assholes who keep calling the cops every time they see a damn kid going to the park alone.

SO glad I grew up on a 7.5 acre farm in the middle of nowhere; the closest neighbors couldn't hear us if we were screaming bloody murder in the woods. My mom would be the exact kind of parent who would not flutter an eyelash if my brother or I wanted to walk to the neighborhood park alone. We lived in the environment…

Well, it was the other mom who got fired from McDonald's, for letting her 9 yo play at a nearby park unsupervised. But yeah. Point is, these two cases together seem like a similar weird phenomenon: random strangers having mothers arrested for letting their children be in public.

How are fines or social services' involvement useful? It still costs / stigmatizes people - especially poorer people - and is based on moral panic.

I grew up in the woods, basically. At any given time my mother had no idea where I was, but could call from the back porch and I'd hear. Around 5-6pm mothers and fathers could be heard in the neighborhood yelling for their kids to come home for dinner (we were often together). This was before cell phones, which would…

I don't think that any progressive nor socialist would agree with that. At all.

So a source article says "there is no law that specifies how old a child has to be before he or she can go somewhere unsupervised. It's done on a case-by-case basis." But she had to pay $4,000 bond to get out of jail. For not breaking a nonlaw that doesn't exist. Hmm.

Your child is more likely to have a heart attack than to be abducted by a stranger.