LMFAO someone who I thought was a friend just blocked me on TikTok because I was challenging their idea that lemon juice is good for everyone's skin just bc it was used in ancient Indian practices and thinking otherwise is perpetuating western white supremacist ideals

at some point y'all gotta realize that weaponizing identity politics and your indigeneity to evade a valid discussion is disingenuous and in this particular case, it's disrespectful to all the indigenous folx currently working in applied sciences.

science is also natural and is based on empirical evidence. obviously racism exists in these fields bc it's systemic but the idea that challenging a belief just because it belonged to an ancient indigenous culture doesn't really make any sense to me.

we can protect indigenous practices, beliefs, & folklore while also understanding the advancements made from observations and experimentation. our indigenous ancestors were scientists—absolutely! how do you think the austronesians were able to cross and colonize the damn pacific?

they were able to do that because of empirical evidence based on observation & experimentation. lots of people died tryna hop from island to island and they finally realized, from their OBSERVATIONS, that they could find land more easily by following the migration of birds.

this is literally science. it's natural. humans get phenomena wrong ALL the time, that's why science is always "changing"—bc we're always learning something new

ancient practices are important to protect. but there's no need to uphold them as more "correct" just because they were an ancient tradition. humans become more & more knowledgable based on previous findings & create updated versions of medicines & tech ALL THE TIME

lemon juice might work for a lot of people but it can also cause A LOT of problems for others. applying lemon juice onto skin, particularly dark skin, can cause chemical leukoderma and phytophotodermatitis. beauty chemists have extracted vit c, citric acid,

ascorbic acid, & niacin from lemons and now use them in product formulations bc there are other chemicals in lemons that can cause adverse reactions. they literally just extracted the beneficial chemicals from lemons to create products that cause less problems for less people

promoting putting lemon juice on your skin to an audience of tens of thousands of ppl desperate to "fix" their acneic sensitive skin is so dangerous without a disclaimer, especially if you're not a medical professional. pointing that out is not perpetuating white supremacy lmao

anyway this thread is coming from an indigenous person who has actually lived on their ancestral land so no one can tell me i'm wrong

^ you see how annoying weaponizing identity politics to evade any type of criticism is? lmao (and i'll admit, i used to do it all the time!)