Kahlil Greene, the 21-year-old TikTok creator elected Yale's first Black student body president in 2019, is adept at those skills, which he uses regularly to educate his more than 400,000 TikTok followers and 30,000-plus Instagram followers. Greene's TikTok is full of content that spans decades — from the Hidden History series, highlighting forgotten or unknown moments of Black American history, to History of Cultural Appropriation, focused on sharing historic moments of uncredited Black inspiration.
The "How Everything on this App Originated with Black People" series is on its fifth installment, with each racking up hundreds of thousands of views. The videos call out the hypocrisy of progressive creators utilizing Black culture as viral trends — from the "ice in my veins" pose, which originated with Black basketball players, to the now widely used phrase "sheesh," a sound of appreciation used in response to someone showing off, which has roots in luxury "drip culture" originally popularized by Black rappers. Greene begins each video with the blunt reminder that "Most of Gen-Z culture is just a whitewashed version of Black American culture." Read more...
More about Tik Tok, Social Good, and Identitiesvia Tingle Tech