Sonja Lanehart has made the point that straight white (or even gay white) people using words like yas and werk to seem hip is sort of like white pop singers wearing dreadlocks, gold chains, and low-hanging jeans; it’s an act of lifting the “cool” parts of an oppressed culture while conveniently leaving behind the things that make actually being a part of that culture, which invented the cool stuff in the first place, very hard.
