Tesla? Nein, danke.
Posted on 07/29/2015 2:22:51 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
“Ready to get uncomfortable with us?” asked the official MTV Twitter account on Wednesday, preparing its audience for the documentary White People, which aired that night. In the hour-long special, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Jose Antonio Vargas talks to young people — many of them white — about race in America. While white people aren’t the only ones talking, they are involved in every conversation, and each segment has some focus on the white experience of race: a white guy who goes to a historically black college, the white teachers at a school on an Oglala Sioux reservation, white people who feel “attacked” by questions about racism at town-hall discussions in North Carolina and Washington State. It’s a documentary for white people, Vargas acknowledges, and an attempt to get them to reckon with their own racial privilege.
The documentary did make some of its subjects uncomfortable. When presented with evidence that white people are more likely to receive scholarships than people of color, one white student says, “Okay, now I feel like the victim here … I feel like you guys are attacking me now.” Many white people managed to take Vargas’s questions super personally and, at the same time, disassociate themselves from racism. They struggled to understand that white privilege is something that is both bigger than they are and also something they are actively involved in.
At the same time the documentary was airing, this disconnect was playing out in real time on Twitter. After the VMA nominations were announced, Nicki Minaj tweeted, “If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies, you will be nominated for vid of the year.” Taylor Swift read the tweet and, like many of the white people in White People, managed to both take it personally and avoid accountability. “It's unlike you to pit women against each other,” she tweeted at Minaj. The exchange was portrayed by the tabloid internet as a frivolous spat between two pop stars, but their disconnect was actually a pretty trenchant example of what happens all too often when white people hear big-picture critiques about racism.
Swift, it’s clear from her response, didn’t read Minaj’s tweet as a critique of the VMAs and, more broadly, the media. She thought she was having a conversation about women and competition. Minaj’s tweet, though, was meant to critique embedded racism and deep cultural biases. “Nothing to do with any of the women, but everything to do with a system that doesn't credit black women for their contributions to pop culture as freely/quickly as they reward others,” Minaj explained on her Instagram later. “We are huge trendsetters, not second class citizens that get thrown crumbs. This isn't anger. This is #information.”
This, as the reaction to both her tweet and the White People documentary shows, is a tough lesson for white people to learn. It’s not about how hard you’ve worked for what you have, how you personally feel about people of other races, or how good your intentions are. It is about the fact that you benefit from white privilege (and, in this case, from a culture that privileges skinny white women’s bodies). So it is about you — just not in the way you thought it was.
Swift did not create the music industry’s exacting beauty standards and racial biases. But it’s also true that she benefits from them. She easily fits the dominant ideal of thin, white beauty and hasn’t been vocal about questioning it. She offers her fans inclusive platitudes like, “You’re lucky enough to be different, never change,” and, “I think that there are so many different ways that someone can be beautiful.” But as far as I know, she’s never acknowledged that she would have had a harder time connecting with all of those fans if she looked different. Hanging out with mostly white supermodels onstage every night doesn’t help much either.
“I thought I was being called out. I missed the point, I misunderstood, then misspoke,” Swift tweeted yesterday. “I’m sorry, Nicki.” In a way, though, Swift was being called out. Not for being nominated for a VMA but because she has failed, at least publicly, to consider her role in perpetuating beauty standards that are impossible for most women to live up to. The way forward isn’t just an apology to Minaj. It is to acknowledge that Minaj’s anger at systemic racism is legitimate, and to join her in calling bull$#*+ on the industry’s beauty standards and railing against the ways in which those standards inform which artists are rewarded for their work. Swift is famously good at collecting friends. I’m sure she could befriend more women who aren’t thin and white, and invite them up onstage with her. If she really does see Minaj’s original point, she can’t just apologize and leave it at that.
White People doesn’t push its white interview subjects to this conclusion, and it has drawn some warranted criticism for that. The documentary doesn’t ask white Americans how they “can live with themselves in the current climate of terrorism against black people in a structurally racist system,” as Rebecca Carroll notes in The Guardian. Perhaps the exchange between Minaj and Swift was the best thing to happen during the week the documentary was released. By contrast, the criticism Swift received wasn’t exactly gentle. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for her to be an example of white failure to recognize and address structural racism. But as a powerful public figure with a devoted following, she can choose to turn her discomfort into something more meaningful than an acknowledgment and apology. And hopefully, in doing so, push other white people to do the same.
These Cretins will never grow up.
I am not white, I considered myself “uncolored”.
When will we see some frank talk about what black people need to change about themselves?
“Her name suggests she might be Jewish - maybe, I don’t know - but what if someone wrote a piece called “Yes, Jews, It is About You”. I bet she wouldn’t like that.”
Jews aren’t white?
I mean I know some of us Jews aren’t white. But I got a lecture about having white privilege the other day.
Are we Jews subject to white privilege penalties without getting white privilege?
So confusing.
And, anyway, to your point, the UN regularly says “yes, Jews, It is About You.” We Jews are pretty used to getting the blame for everything.
Tesla? Nein, danke.
Uh, oh, here we go again.....
Yes, when I look at Taylor Swift I instantly channel those arbitrary beauty standards that have been created by oppressive white culture. And I channel them GOOD AND HARD.
Duh.
I stopped watching MTV when they stopped doing what they were created for. Music videos.
They call it white privilege but it is really just being reliable. Show up on time, always do the job you were hired for plus a little more if you can and be honest and polite.
Bosses and customers will fall all over themselves to work with you.
White Privilege = Reliability
Bummer. Hopefully you had some witty retort.
Stop focusing on skin color, the whole lot of the race based idiots. Just focus on the content of everyone’s character. PERIOD. The cop’s BEHAVIOR. The perp’s BEHAVIOR. Hold every person on the planet to the same high standards of civility.
This “privilege” thing is STUPID!!!
A person behaves wrongly: how can you choose One Perfect Excuse for them based on skin color? Was she bitchy because she is used to being treating poorly because she is black? Or was she bitchy because she wasn’t feeling well? Did her son just get cancer? Did she lose her job? Was her baby just born with a disability? Did she fight with her spouse or friend?
Whatever. There are a million PRIVILEGES someone has for behaving properly. White skin may be one. Having a good job could be one, a great sex life, heard a great compliment, a great song, child got into great college, WHATEVER. Race is a teensy portion of our lives.
That's what you get for acting white.
I am, literally, color blind and have absolutely no business or desire to be involved in any discussion about color. It just doesn't compute.
“Jews aren’t white?”
Who said that?
“We Jews are pretty used to getting the blame for everything.”
Clearly not with Ann Friedman - if she is Jewish, that is.
People who espouse the idea of “White Privilege” are people who hate their own race.
In all my celebrative 63 years, I have had no bad days, in my knowledge of how i have fit into this universe of idiots who cannot define themselves, nor measure themselves for their true self-worth, without thinking that they must use another’s measuring stick, or suffer some form of guilt for something that another sells them that they ‘are not’, ‘do not’.
I am a half-breed Mojave. Nothing more, nothing less.
I am a ‘Smith’, one among many, but that name is mine, and mine, alone.
I am a veteran among a family of veterans, back to the battles that made this country.
Lastly, I am an American, with the spirit and cantankerousness of a ‘49-er’, and just as willing as a ‘49-er’, with both hands filled, to prove a point.
‘Chill-un, if ya’s don’ know wha’ a 49-er is, ax yo daddy, an’ ah’s don’ mean no football player, nei’der!’
White kid fell for the trap. The correct answer would be; “Why do you think that is?” “Are there more white kids applying for scholarship than kids of other races?” “Are the scholarships tied to academic standards?” “Have you asked the people who manage these scholarships to explain the disparity?” “If you can’t answer any of these questions, how can I take your documentary seriously?”
Call 'em Uncle Cletuses.
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