Justin Bieber debuted a new hairstyle that looks like dreadlocks over the weekend and people are now accusing the singer of cultural appropriation.
Bieber shared an image on Sunday that showed him standing in a pink and black checkered sweatshirt, red shorts and red sunglasses inside what appears to be his home. However, fans quickly noticed the artist’s new hairstyle, which appears to be a return to the dreadlocks he was sporting roughly five years ago that also resulted in cultural appropriation accusations. Many people argue that the hairstyle is synonymous with Black culture.
Bieber followed up the controversial post with a selfie on Monday that further showed off his new look. Many of his 171 million followers were quick to take to the post’s comments to tell the singer “this ain’t it.”
“Can you not?” one user wrote.
“JUSTIN PLS STOP,” another added.
“You did this for what?” someone else asked.
People also took to Twitter to criticize Bieber’s new choice.
Justin Beiber has ALWAYS preyed on Black Culture, y’all just ignored it #JustinBieber #culturalappropriation #culturevulture #dreads,” one user wrote.
“justin bieber gets white people dreads and yall just now realize that hes been appropriating black culture…weird,” another added.
“Something is wrong, Justin Bieber is being conveniently ethnic again. Ethnic as in Black…” a third user wrote.
“Why is Justin Bieber really out in the world with some dreads fr? Like bro, your team, your WIFE was like YES this is a great decision? Yet ANOTHER shot at cultural appropriation!” another user wrote.
“Now why did justin bieber get dreadlocks and why does he keep getting a pass,” another asked.
As Billboard notes, Bieber was previously criticized for sporting dreadlocks in 2016 when he wore them around the time he was promoting his fourth album “Purpose.”
At the time, he responded to the backlash in an Instagram video, jokingly saying: “‘Dude you gonna do anything with your hair, or are you just gonna leave it like that, dude?’ Yeah, some girl came up to me and she was like, ‘I love you, Justin, but like, that’s like my least favorite hairstyle of yours.'”
He captioned the clip, dated almost exactly five years ago, “Being weird is fun’ if u r not weird I don’t like you.”
Claims of Bieber appropriating Black culture come after he was forced to address similar criticism for including an interlude of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking on his sixth studio album, “Justice.”
“Being Canadian… they didn’t teach us about Black history. It was just not a part of our education system,” the musician explained to Bieber Nation co-founder Kristal Terrell on the app Clubhouse (via Billboard).
Bieber admitted he made “insensitive jokes when I was a kid” and was part of the problem “because I just didn’t know better.”
“I want to keep growing and learning about just all social injustices and what it looks like for me to be better, what it looks like for my friends to be better,” the “Yummy” singer said. “And I know I have a long way to go. I love that when people are listening to my album, these conversations are coming up and they’re like, ‘Well, how is he going from Martin Luther King into a love song?'”
Bieber added, “I’m not trying to make a connection between me and Martin Luther King. That’s why I never try to talk about social injustice or I didn’t want to be the one to talk about it because I just have so much more learning to do.”
