Black TikTok dancers are on strike because you guessed it, racism!

According to The Washington Post, Black TikTokers are the "brains, beauty and brawn" behind some of the most groundbreaking content out there– TikTok dances.

Black TikTok creators are on strike to protest the "appropriation of their dances on the app" because apparently, it's black people who come up with the best dances and then white people come to steal it and ruin it with their "sauceless, boiled goose-a** spins."

For someone who has never used TikTok I'm very confused by the copyright and legality of this issue. I actually thought the dances just came with the app… err… I guess it's been black people this entire time?

I'm actually a dancer myself and I used to compete in it. Dance moves were always just that, dance moves. Dancers would often see something done, get inspired and then incorporate it into their own routines.

Looking back, could I have been perpetrating in theft or even racism???

TikTok user, Amanda Bennett, says this strike "taps into a larger history of white capitalists profiting off the unpaid labor of Black Americans."

I believe it's important to give credit when due but are white TikTokers "exploiting Black creators for personal gain?"

Bennett thinks so.

In one of her TikTok videos, later put up by NowThis News, she says that white people believe they are entitled to Black people's creativity because white people will say they "appreciate Black culture" but she reminds us that simply saying they appreciate black culture "without taking tangible steps to empower Black creators is still racist."

She continues, "White people's racism in this situation comes from a sense of entitlement and self-centeredness that were crucial parts of violence systems like slavery and colonialism."

Pretty heavy subject matter for an app with users mostly made up of Gen Zers.