Over a decade ago in 2011, an extremely popular Asian American YouTuber named Kevin Wu, known by his fans as KevJumba, posted a three-minute and eleven-second video called “I’m not Cool.” The video, which was widely viewed by his fans on YouTube, featured a tongue-in-cheek list of ten reasons why he failed to be cool. Included among his reasons was the fact that he “acts Black” when he talks to Black people, which he illustrated by saying “for rizzles,” a slang phrase that had already become passé by that time. The phrase, which can be translated as “for real,” had first become popular in a 2002 song by rapper Snoop Dogg.
Another reason that he listed was his “super competitive” nature. He illustrated this supposed flaw by showing himself aggressively boasting after batting away a crumpled ball of paper that his friend had tried to toss into a trash can. In his boast, he pronounced the words I and my as AH and MAH rather than as A-ee and MA-ee as he normally did: “Told you! AH told you! Not in MAH house, baby! Not in MAH house!” The use of the monophthong, or single vowel (ah, mah), instead of the diphthong, or double vowel (A-ee or MA-ee), in these two words could be heard as echoing Black language. The use of the diphthong, by contrast, is often heard as a standard version of English, which can be associated with whiteness.
In contemporary discussions in the United States, especially among youth, KevJumba’s language might be called a blaccent. The term blaccent is a portmanteau that combines the words “black” and accent” and that refers to the appropriation, or theft, of Black language by people who do not identify as Black. Blaccents are certainly recognized as uncool, if not offensive, today. Many have argued that this way of speaking perpetuates stereotypes of Black people, and especially Black men, through racist exaggeration. For example, some non-Black people use blaccents when trying to sound comical, angry, or laid-back rather than serious, sophisticated, or careful.
Critics of blaccents have also pointed out a racist double standard: Black people have long been discriminated against for their use of Black language in institutional settings, such as classrooms, courtrooms, and newsrooms, yet some non-Black people gain celebrity and profit from seemingly doing the same.
Is it fair when non-Black entertainers like Meghan Trainor, Olivia Rodrigo, or Awkwafina can be heard as talented, cool, or funny when using language that Black people get criticized for using?
These observations, which have recently been made by both academics and everyday critics, are relevant to KevJumba’s video. His self-aware utterance of “for rizzles” in combination with his monophthongal pronunciation of I and my after swatting away a paper ball links Black speech with a particular kind of cool and aggressive masculinity that depends on a stereotypical image of Black men as excessively physical, if not dangerous. This sort of racialized masculinity may be seen as reflecting positive feelings about Black culture in some contexts, but it can also reinforce a negative stereotype of race and gender.
In addition, KevJumba personally profited from this video in which he used a blaccent. He was a YouTube celebrity who had one of the most subscribed YouTube channels between 2008 to 2013, and this video received over 7 million views after one year. By maintaining a large following, he continued to attract advertisers who paid him large sums of money. According to Social Blade, a website that monitors social media activity, KevJumba’s channel was earning anywhere between $85,000 and $555,000 per year in advertising revenue at the time.
In this sense, KevJumba participated in a practice that highlighted his racial privilege. Specifically, his use of a blaccent led to his maintaining a profitable career rather than becoming a target of discrimination, and his ability to benefit from this racial privilege reflects broader racial inequities in society. Yet, as we suggest in this essay, his performance led to additional cultural consequences beyond sustaining his racial privilege. In particular, it opened up the possibility for viewers to consider stereotypes of Black and Asian masculinities with a critical lens, as KevJumba humorously juxtaposed them, and it invited public affirmations of his Asian American masculinity. Our claim is based on our analysis of KevJumba’s video performance (see Appendix) as well as about 1,900 of over 40,000 viewer comments posted between August 2011 and March 2012.
First, consider how his comical tone allowed KevJumba to say things that he might not have been able to if he were serious. People who want to be seen in a positive light generally don’t list negative qualities that they have. Audiences were supposed to understand that his list was ironic—that is, he didn’t completely mean what he said.
At the same time, KevJumba wasn’t necessarily speaking untruthfully: he seemed to reflect on real-life observations. He may have noticed himself changing his speech style according to the race of the person whom he was talking to, a practice that linguists call accommodation. It is also a form of style-shifting or code-switching, when people change their speech style or language according to the situation. Additionally, he may, in fact, have engaged in competitive behavior in order to become one of the most popular YouTubers in the world. KevJumba’s self-deprecation, which was not entirely sincere but was still partly truthful, contributed to his humorous tone.
Some non-Black people walk a delicate line between appreciating and appropriating the language of Black communities. How does a non-Black person perform a version of Blackness without moving into offensive territory?
By performing in this comically ironic way, KevJumba was able to say and do things that he normally could not. More specifically, his comical tone allowed him to make light of a sociolinguistic dilemma: KevJumba’s comedy, despite its playfulness, raised this contemporary puzzle of language and race, and his ironic tone may have prevented viewers from hearing his language as especially offensive.
Second, let’s look more closely at how KevJumba’s use of a blaccent was not just about race but also about gender. As noted above, his performance perpetuated stereotypes of Black masculinity. Yet KevJumba was an Asian American man who was aware of stereotypes of Asian masculinity. While images of East Asian men may be changing due to the growing global popularity of Korean popular culture over the last decade, when KevJumba made his video in 2011, East Asian men had been generally stereotyped in Hollywood films, such as Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Sixteen Candles (1984), The Goonies (1985), and The Hangover (2009), as comical “nerds” who lacked social skills and physical strength. In other words, they had been portrayed as lacking hegemonic masculinity, a narrow set of ways of being acceptably masculine in white-dominated spaces.
Part of the humor of KevJumba’s video came from how he placed two racialized images side-by-side. On the one hand, he was an Asian American man who could be viewed by society at large as not being masculine enough. On the other hand, he found himself moving towards a masculinity that depended on stereotypes of Black men as too masculine. This contrast of masculine deficiency and excess perpetuated racial stereotypes, yet his comical tone also invited his audience to become aware of, and perhaps even adopt a critical view of, these stereotypes.
This invitation was accepted by KevJumba’s viewers, who overwhelmingly supported him. The video received over 40,000 comments within half a year of its posting, and the number of subscribers to his channel continued to grow over the next few months at a rate of over 100,000 per month. Additionally, fans showed their support through comments that they posted. Even if not all of them agreed that it was acceptable for him to claim that he acted Black (e.g., “WTF is acting black? GTFO”), many expressed that they found that it was acceptable, with over 300 viewers directly quoting his words (e.g., “NOT IN MAH HOUSE, BABY! *HAIR FLIP*”). Over 1,600 fans also declared their love for him, describing him with adjectives such as cool, hot, sexy, and cute. These declarations not only reinforced KevJumba’ positive public image but also made this kind of humorously self-deprecating Asian masculinity publicly acceptable. It became a style of masculinity that people could admire and aspire to.
KevJumba certainly did not successfully overturn years of racial stereotyping with one video. In fact, as we have discussed above, he depended on some pernicious stereotypes of Black men. In addition, his video was short-lived, as he eventually removed all of his videos from YouTube after suffering from a serious car accident in 2016. Yet even if this video had been posted for only five years, it produced different kinds of cultural consequences during the time that it was posted, both perpetuating and contesting stereotypes of race and gender among his fans. Most of these fans were in the United States, but many were also in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. KevJumba’s widely celebrated performance speaks to the power that internet stars have to reshape how marginalized racial groups are imagined on a global scale, even if they do not always choose to do so.
Appendix
Example 1
Example 2
