During the 2024 Paris Olympics, if you found yourself asking the question: When did break dancing become an Olympic sport? Well, you certainly weren’t the only one. Let’s talk about Raygun.
To the surprise of many of us, breaking was a new sport at the games this year. The men’s and women’s breaking competition consisted of a series of one-on-one battles, with each trying to impress a panel of nine judges. There were multiple rounds per battle, and in each round, competitors gave their best spins and flips, while also mixing in what is called “top rocking,” or dance elements performed while upright. They were also judged on musicality and vocabulary that reflected how they interacted with the music.
One particular Olympics competitor we can’t seem to get out of our heads is Professor Rachael “Raygun” Gunn, who proudly represented her country of Australia.
Raygun and her Olympics performance featured kangaroo hops, snake-like slithers, awkward facial expressions, and a move that looked like she had a sore back. The internet wasted no time with the memes and parodies. With that, she failed to impress the judges enough to earn her any serious points, losing in all three rounds.
Break dancing originated in the streets of New York in the early ’70s. A form of dance popularized by African Americans and Latinos, breaking included stylized footwork, back spins, and head spins. In the ’80s, breaking expanded and was adopted by mainstream artists like Michael Jackson. His infamous moonwalk — a step that involved sliding backward and lifting the soles of the feet so that he appeared to be gliding or floating — is still imitated to this day. Breaking had moved from the streets to a phenomenon embraced by a broader culture.
Rachael Gunn is a 36-year-old university lecturer with a PhD who has a long history of jazz, tap, and ballroom dance. But it was her husband that introduced her to breaking nearly 16 years ago. Believe it or not, she became the face of breaking in Australia, becoming a top-ranked B-girl. At an Olympics qualifying event in Sydney last year, Raygun made the cut and booked her ticket to Paris. The rest, as we say, is history.
Gunn has been inundated with hateful messages, including a petition signed by 50,000 people demanding she apologize for her atrocity on the world stage. She was accused of manipulating her way onto the world’s biggest stage at the expense of other talent in the Australian hip-hop scene.
That’s deep.
I believe there is something to be said about appreciating an art form; giving homage to something to show love and respect for your influences. Unfortunately, Raygun and her Olympics performance was another stark example of how a white academic crosses that line into appropriation. What it boils down to is deceit: a sneaky way to get away with stealing and make it look like it you were in the game the whole time. We’ve seen this unmitigated boldness before.
In 2022, Jennifer Buck published the book Bad and Boujee: Toward a Trap Feminist Theology. Buck, a white woman professor at Azusa Pacific University, taught the course Trap Feminist Theology for five years prior to the book being published. The book “engages with the overlap of Black experience, hip-hop music, ethics, and feminism to focus on a subsection known as ‘trap feminism’ and construct a Trap Feminist Theology.”
It also states that “Trap feminism emerges out of trap culture, where the Black woman is creating a space outside of the barriers of poverty harnessing autonomy, employment, and agency to allow for a reinvention of self-identity while remaining faithful to social location.”
Buck specifically wrote about being a trap queen and life in the ghetto. Even more misleading, the cover of the book shows a picture of a Black woman, so naturally one would think that this book was written by a Black woman. Buck seemed to think she herself was a part of the Black community.
Bad and Boujee was pulled from the shelves immediately, after Black women saw this foolishness. But the harm had already been done.
As a university professor myself, one of the complexities I find is that course content inevitably relates to personal experiences of privilege and oppression among both students and professors. Whether I’m teaching business management or accounting, topics can arise that allow those particular experiences to be seen and heard. Even when professors have benefited from their own multicultural training, race and racism present itself differently.
Black culture is seen drastically differently through a white lens. White people seem to miss the part that appropriating Black culture takes everything from us but the burden — it’s damaging. It has consequences that impact society and culture as a whole. Raygun wanted all the rhythm without the blues. But she still says that her impact, no matter how it landed, was worth it. I suppose she’s right since we haven’t stopped talking about it.
It’s not a surprise that the breakdancing category will not be included in the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. I think it’s safe to say, we will all be better for it.
