"Disrespectful and distorting history"..BTS Controversy Over Racism in Black Colleges [Star Issue]

*This content was translated by AI.

It's obvious racism.

Boy group BTS (BTS) is embroiled in a whitewashing controversy.

On the 13th, BTS (RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, Jungkook) posted a video titled "BTS (BTS) "Arirang" Animation Trailer: What is your love song?" on its official YouTube channel "BANGTANTV."

The video was inspired by the "Seven Koreans at Howard" published in the Washington Post on May 8, 1896, and some of them recorded Korea's first sound source in Washington, D.C., on July 24 of the same year.

In fact, if you look at the video, when the folk song "Arirang" played, Korean students in the past took a boat to the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C., to sing. After that, another students gather around the people who sing, mostly white.

Some black K-pop fans, as well as black college communities, criticize the video as whitewashing. Although Howard University was the leading black university in the United States and served as the center of the black civil rights movement, the student description was not appropriate. Whitewashing refers to the act of intentionally excluding people of color by changing characters of color into white people when making movies or plays.

Howard University also raised controversy over whitewashing by uploading an article titled "Before BTS: How Howard University has highlighted Korean culture and how black culture has affected K-pop" on its official website. Howard University said, "Most of the audience has been described as non-Black, which goes against the history of a black-centered university. Even if the intention is good, cultural sensitivity and historical accuracy are needed," he pointed out.

The local community also claimed that "BTS tried to whitewash Howard University," and at the same time, "The direction did not gain more sympathy from black Americans in that BTS has said their music is rooted in black music, R&B and hip-hop." Howard University's historical achievements have not been fully demonstrated. It may feel rude," he points out.

However, the BTS explained, "It was reconstructed and created based on modern imagination using the historical record containing the actual voices of young people who crossed from Korea and the cultural meaning of the first Arirang recording as a motif, and it may be different from the real thing and has nothing to do with the evaluation and interpretation of historical events or characters."

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*This content was translated by AI.