A recent segment on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” is making a lot of people cringe.
On Friday, TikTok star Addison Rae appeared on the late night talk show for a segment called “Addison Rae Teaches Jimmy Eight TikTok Dances,” in which she performed several viral dances from the social media platform.
Unfortunately, the show failed to credit the lesser-known TikTok users who created the choreography, many of whom are Black.
The clip of Rae’s segment went viral over the weekend, with many people on Twitter expressing their annoyance and disgust over the lack of credit and exposure.
where are the black creators who made every single one of these dances at jim??
— AMIL (@Grilledcheeezus) March 27, 2021
Why didn’t you invite the original Black creators to show you and highlight them?
— Britt Yvonne (@bitty_boop) March 27, 2021
This would have been the perfect opportunity for you to lead by example and in giving Black creators their due credit. This opportunity could have been huge for them. But no, you chose to display a white girl who's already got a damn career doing this shit. This sucks, do better
— 🩸Nintendo Bratty Switch🩸 (@ginfueledbrat) March 28, 2021
Stealing from black entertainers and having white "creators" regurgitate it to the masses is american history 101.
— ✨ Dracula Spectacular✨ (@fancycatxo) March 28, 2021
This is cringey. But what’s worse is that Addison has been catapulted to being the face of viral dances created by mostly black tiktokers https://t.co/t4cDsoTQ8l
— Tanya Chen 陈天依 (@tanyachen) March 28, 2021
if i choreographed a dance that went viral on tiktok & woke up one day to see addison rae doing it on jimmy fallon i would simply light something on fire
— Katie Mitchell (@matiekitchell) March 27, 2021
— may-li 🦄 khoe (@mayli) March 28, 2021
Some Twitter users even posted the TikTok handles of the creators.
If people are wanting to know the creators of each:
— princess 💘 (@gorgmorgg) March 29, 2021
Noah Schnapp - do it again
Keara Wilson - savage
yvnggprince - corvette corvette
Jason Derulo - savage love
2flyymy - Laffy taffy
macdaddyz - blinding lights
im literally screaming pic.twitter.com/1oLX0zoQDF
— - (@leftistexe) March 28, 2021
BuzzFeed also compiled a list of the creators. A clip of the segment that was uploaded to the talk show’s YouTube account also includes a list of the creators, but it is unclear if the information was recently added due to the controversy surrounding it.
The show’s original tweet featuring the segment does not include any credit.
8 Tik Tok dances with @whoisaddison!! pic.twitter.com/slKkOOSECI
— jimmy fallon (@jimmyfallon) March 27, 2021
HuffPost reached out to “The Tonight Show” for comment, but did not receive an immediate response.
“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin was vocal about her disappointment in the segment. She tweeted at Fallon on Monday, calling the oversight “a miss.
”“Let’s give credit to the black creators,” Hostin wrote.
This is a miss @jimmyfallon. Let’s give credit to the black creators...... https://t.co/4fy9p96J1G
— Sunny Hostin (@sunny) March 28, 2021
This is not the first time Fallon has made this misstep. In March 2020, “The Tonight Show” did a similar segment with TikTok star Charli D’Amelio demonstrating viral moves to Fallon.
Before D’Amelio was on “The Tonight Show” she was mistaken as being the creator of TikTok’s viral “Renegade” dance. She was not, and merely popularized it with her then-26 million followers, according to The New York Times. The dance was actually choreographed by 14-year-old Jalaiah Harmon.
Harmon told the Times she wasn’t exactly pleased with more mainstream TikTokers co-opting her work.
“I was happy when I saw my dance all over, but I wanted credit for it,” Harmon told the paper in February 2020.