Culture

Tom Hanks’ Very Bad Son Chet Thinks “White Culture” Is Snowboarding And Motocross

"In order for Tom Hanks to remain wholesome and pure, he had to personify every douchey and unlikeable part of his soul and give it life. So protect Chet Hanks at all costs."

by Michelle Rennex  7 February 2020
chet hanks cultural appropriation snowboarding

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At the Golden Globes earlier this year, Chet Hanks set the internet abuzz after a clip of him speaking Patois on the red carpet went viral.

After the video made its way online, Chet faced backlash and was accused for culturally appropriating the English-based creole language from Jamaica. Considering Chet is an American and the son of renowned actor Tom Hanks, there was simply no reason for him to be speaking Patois in any situation.

In response to the criticism, Chet Hanks posted a series of very strange videos to Instagram defending his actions. His excuse? Well… apparently Chet is allowed to speak Patois because despite snowboarding being “white culture”, everyone is still allowed to play the sport. In the strangest analogy known to man, Chet compared a Rastafarian wanting to snowboard to white people wearing dreadlocks.

“Let’s say there’s a Rastafarian with dreadlocks who grew up in Jamaica watching the X Games and Olympics… and said: ‘Hey man, I’d love to snowboard one day, that looks fun!’,” Chet began to ramble. “When he grows up, he takes a trip to Colorado and hops on snowboard… and falls in love with it. He wants to move to Colorado and wear Oakley shades and Billabong and totally get into the scene – play flip cup and beer pong and say: ‘Yeah dude! I was just shredding gnarling pow, just hitting huge kickers, busting threes, just shredding through the trees. It was fucking gnarly dude.'”

Chet continued: “Are white people supposed to get mad at him for appropriating their culture? How ridiculous would that be if white people were like ‘no, no, no, this is our culture’… so my question is how come it doesn’t work both ways?”

Clearly clueless to the purpose and meaning of dreadlocks in black culture, Chet was dragged for his comparison of hair and sports. To follow up his original video and explain himself further, Chet posted the sixth instalment of his Instagram TV series Chet Chat which focused on cultural appropriation.

Touching on the topic of cultural appropriation and addressing the backlash on his accent and analogy, Chet claimed that the whole idea was just confusing to him. “People are saying white people have no culture. That to me, is confusing because just look at all the different varieties of European cultures like French people vs Swedish people vs German people,” he started.

To drum in his original snowboarding point, Chet implored viewers to assume that white people did have a culture to understand his view. “If white Americans had a culture… I’d imagine it to be something like snowboarding – like the culture surrounding snowboarding or motocross where it’s mostly white people.”

Claiming that he meant snowboarding as “a reference point for the community that supports it” over a sport, Chet then shifted over to comparing hip-hop and country music – every cultural appropriator’s favourite defence.  As expected, Chet predictably asked his audience: “If you don’t have a problem with a black person wearing cowboy hats and cowboys boots and loving country music, then why do you have a problem with white people wearing braids and gold teeth and getting into hip-hop music?”

Despite there being evidence that country music has roots in black culture, Chet decided to just dig himself into a deeper hole. Chet decided to speak about the problem he has with the idea of cultural appropriation and people thinking that it’s stealing.

“Why do you have to look at it as a white person who is wearing braids and gold teeth is trying to manipulate and steal from black culture?,” Chet asked. “Why can’t it be that he loves black culture and that’s just what speaks to him?” After Chet’s failed justification of his use of Patois, the internet tore into him for his terrible reasoning and unjustified appropriation of another language.

While there is nothing wrong with speaking another language, Chet’s continued use of the accent to joke around comes of disingenuous and disrespectful. Just before his explanation videos, Chet posted a Patois video dissing the “MAGA” girls behind him while laughing with friends over the accent. Ending the caption, Chet said: “And to all you lames still bitchin’ about appropriation pree dis… y’all can ‘appropriate’ deez nutz lmaoooooooo.”