Twerking In African American Culture

From the Charleston to the Twist, dance crazes have continuously served to characterize their era. One of the most scandalous dance fads to date is twerking. According to the Oxford Dictionary, twerking is “to dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low squatting stance”. Evidently, this is not something you would want to do in front of your relatives at your next family reunion. Though its history is quite short, twerking has only recently gained the attention of the public. There are speculations that twerking originated in American strip clubs, but the dance’s sturdiest relations lie in African culture. Vivacious and rhythmic dancing is important in African culture as well as Caribbean
Many critics have claimed that Miley Cyrus is exploiting African American culture. When someone is twerking, some people might say not to do that because it is ratchet or a black thing. Twerking would not have been exploited as a ratchet act if people knew how to behave properly. There is nothing fruitful in a ratchet culture. Those that take part in it are only portraying undesirable stereotypes, whether they knew it or not. Twerking is originally a part of the Cote D’Ivoire’s culture, but now everyone knows it as something that is sexualized in our society
In west Africa the dance is being looked down upon and has been described as an infectious disease by officials. During 2013, 33 students at Scripps Ranch High School in San Diego were suspended for posting a twerking video on the internet. Even if twerking has faced criticism, it is slowly becoming an enterprise to many. Twerk teams have many successful videos on YouTube, sell out dance shows, and they even have their own clothing line. Amateur twerkers charge around $1,500-$3,500 to create promotional twerking videos for artists. Twerking has come a long way from when it began in the Mapouka and in New Orleans. If twerking was the same it was twenty years before, it would not be the iconic dance craze we all know and it would eventually die down. It is still popular not only in our culture, but in other countries as well. Twerking has become the word of our era and if there are more altercations to the dance, maybe it will still be in the next