After watching the video of the brother in Dallas going off on a group of female patrons for twerking on the furniture in his restaurant it made me wonder if there is an actual dollar value for twerking. Now I realize there is a value for twerking in the strip clubs and exercise circuits, but my point here is to discuss an actual economic value since it has made its way into households and social scenes all over this country and many corners of the world. We can look up the worth of Walmart and its $386.3 Billion, Facebook is around $720 Billion and Amazon has reached over $1 Trillion in value. So again, my question is; “what is the real dollar value of twerking?”
Picture this, twerking as an actual place or business (like Walmart, Facebook and Amazon) and you make money every time someone publicly says the word or twerks. How much do you think it would be worth? Black people have figured out, as we consistently do, how to turn something into a worldwide cultural phenomenon without actually getting any long term or generational benefits from it. Oh, and by the way, can you believe that a few misinformed internet writers want to give Miley Cyrus credit for popularizing and even inventing twerking. Now that’s funny! Individually twerk dancers, fitness professionals, and promoters do well enough to enjoy the simple spoils of life; but what about the ability to actually transform communities, create jobs and become a publicly traded entity.
A quick Google search and you will find that RLJ Lodging Trust is one of the largest publicly owned Black businesses, reporting total assets of $5.92 billion in June 2020. A huge difference from what we see in the value of the companies I mentioned earlier. So I ask you how do we take our cultural contributions and collectively turn those into something of extreme financial value?
Be it you view it as a private or public action twerking seems like it will be with us for a while, and as a man I don’t necessarily have a problem with that. However, as a supporter of community economics it seems we continue to fall short on getting to the real money.
Russ McClinton
@russrightnow
More on the origin of twerking
