Tyga Disses Black Culture to Defend "Friendship" With Underage Girl

I swear this is not a Kardashian story. Well, not really. Allow me to explain.

On Friday afternoon, famous-for-having-a phatty Amber Rose was asked during a radio interview with The Breakfast Club about the alleged relationship between rapper, Tyga, 25, and Kylie Jenner, 17. In case it matters: Tyga is the ex-boyfriend and father of child to Rose’s best friend.

“She’s a baby, she needs to go to bed at 7 o’clock and relax,” Rose said of the youngest Jenner. “[Tyga] should be ashamed of himself. For sure.”

Whether Rose said this to defend her friend or not, it was still sound logic. But Jenner’s older sister, Khloe Kardashian, took offense and responded to Rose via Twitter, referencing Rose’s days as an underage stripper. All hell broke loose. I’ll spare you the ugly details, as this is not a Kardashian story.

What this is a story about is Tyga, the actual target of Rose’s angst. And Tyga’s appearance on The Breakfast Club radio show on Tuesday morning to address his alleged relationship with a 17 year old (and more).  What Tyga said during that interview was worse than any of the insults hurled by Rose or Kardashian.

When inevitably asked about Kylie Jenner, Tyga denied they were in a relationship (of course). He blamed TMZ for mischaracterizing his friendship with Jenner, which includes European travel destinations, sneaking out of parties together, and posting snuggly photos on Instagram.

Tyga went on to explain the misunderstanding is due to culture differences, not him and Kylie doing a bunch of stuff usually reserved for people in relationships.

“In black culture it’s different,” he began. “If you hang around somebody you’re smashing them. White people, white culture, it’s different. They really friends. It’s genuine, it’s different. How we think is a little different with our mentality.”

Oh. So let me get all this Birth of A Nation logic straight. White people know how to form friendships and emotional attachments, but Black people just can’t help but to keep it all the way primitive. And TMZ, who Tyga cites as originally mischaracterizing his friendship, and who also once referred to a respected Black mayor as a “crackhead” in their announcement of his passing, is apparently Black culture now. The more you know.

Now look, I get that Tyga is trying to do everything possible to keep the authorities out of his “friendship”, as in the state of California, Kylie’s primary residence, a sexual relationship between an adult and anyone under 18 is illegal, if only a misdemeanor. I entirely expected Tyga to offer some sort of defense for this “friendship”— which is still sketchy to me and most everyone with good sense because of the vast age gap.

What I didn’t expect was for him to throw Black culture under the bus to justify these R. Kelly-ish shenanigans. I mean, Tyga had all day, and all night to come up with an explanation for his friendship with an underage girl 8 years his junior, and this Black-people-can’t-be-friends BS is the best he could do? I mean, it’s not a good defense for several reasons, and the obvious one other than trading in ignorant stereotypes about Black sexuality is, hello? Tyga you’re Compton-bred Black, a product of Black culture. By his own backwards logic, if Black folks can’t be just friends, then he and Jenner aren’t.

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The Root: R. Kelly Fans, Stop Blaming His Victims

I can’t say I’m all that surprised about the backlash against the folks who have been denouncing R. Kelly lately. I called on people who still supported him to rethink that position after the Village Voice interviewed Jim DeRogatis—the journalist who broke the story of R. Kelly’s sexual conduct with underage girls nearly 15 years ago—in a story that has now gone viral. Since then, seemingly every major site that blacks and feminists frequent has run an article calling for readers to stop supporting a “monster” by not purchasing R. Kelly’s latest album, Black Panties. Over at Hello Beautiful, where the site ran a full-on “We Love R. Kelly” piece after hosting a listening session for his latest music, there was backtracking after the Village Voice interview. The writer of the original article, Leigh Davenport, said that she now feels “shocked” and “horrified” by the depth of the allegations against one of her favorite singers. “I was, perhaps willingly, quite ignorant to the details of R. Kelly’s offenses,” she said in a follow-up interview on the Hello Beautiful site.

So many of us are just now putting a clichéd two and two together about exactly what R. Kelly has been accused of by dozens of young women in Chicago. And as many of us rightfully balk at his misdeeds, there are those who acknowledge his alleged actions and still do mental contortions of Cirque du Soleil proportions to avoid holding him accountable for anything.

I’ve read countless commenters who wondered, “Where were these girls’ parents?” as if their parents knew every move they made at 14 and we weren’t all doing our damnedest to elude our own parents. Then there were people—women, even—blaming the victims, who were teenagers, as more or less fast girls who knew exactly

what they were doing when they chose to have sex with a man twice their age in exchange for tennis shoes, Coach bags and promises of a fairy-tale life.

“Question: At 14 years old did you know who and what you were doing with your body ... I did,” one woman wrote on Facebook.

Oh, really? Did you? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Whether or not a 14-year-old girl fully understands the grown-up ramifications of sex is actually irrelevant. Statutory rape is illegal in most states in America, including Illinois, where the age of consent is 17.

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