Member Since: 10/1/2011
Posts: 53,790
|
Elle: Nicki shuts down white feminism.
Quote:
Nicki Minaj was upset when her video "Anaconda" was shut out of a few major categories at the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs), including Best Video of the Year. Given that the song and video inspired imitations, memes, and even bans—not to mention racking up over 505 million views on YouTube, Minaj's reaction seemed wholly appropriate.
She called out the culture vulturing—the unapologetic appropriation of elements of one culture by members of another culture. She called out the narrow aesthetic value system that awards shows like the VMAs and pop culture in general upholds. She put a lot of people on notice.
Too often, artists that are sidelined and marginalized despite their sizeable and influential contributions to culture are supposed to be grateful when they are invited to the party. If black people tell themselves (as they do), "you have to be twice as good," God forbid they actually want the rewards to be reflective of that effort. But, here we are.
Until Minaj goes off script. Eff a frenemy, we've got, in Drake parlance, enemies, gotta a lotta enemies. After accepting the award for Best Hip-Hop Video, she thanked her pastor and then turned to Cyrus.
"Now back to this bitch who had a lot to say about me the other day in the press. Miley, what's good?"
What Minaj did was necessary and even radical. She was refusing to apologize for wanting to be visible and rewarded like her peers. [n]She was calling ******** on the audacity of a white woman, who has, in the past, responded to people of color with indifference while she bastardizes their language, hair, dance, and visual aesthetics. Minaj did what a lot of black women want to do: call out people when they try to render you invisible, when they try to render your pain insignificant.[/b] So, as a black woman, when I heard Minaj say, "What's good?" I knew that it wasn't a greeting at all. It wasn't even a threat. It was a promise of accountability. It was a promise that today, tomorrow, and from here on out in pop perpetuity that Minaj would be accounted for, visible, and properly remunerated. And for a black woman to say that publicly, and angrily at that, was to be not just unapologetically human (because who wouldn't feel some type of way) but unapologetically black, which is a radical thing to be these days.
There's a price and penalty when black people tell white people how they feel about racism, and how they feel about being marginalized, about how they feel about being sourced and exploited for their culture. Once a black woman gets publicly angry, it's a scarlet letter that she can never shake. Even if the common, tired label―"angry black woman"―is not your cup of Earl Grey, they'll make you drink it anyway; just ask Shonda Rhimes. So for Minaj to check Cyrus and to demand that she be accountable for her irresponsibility—from those faux blonde locks she wore during Sunday night's awards to her tone deaf commentary on the Swift and Minaj situation—is to essentially throw a middle finger at white feminism, the particular brand of girl power promoted by Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus, and the defensiveness (it's not about you!) that often comes when it is criticized.
|
The above article wasn't written by Nicki, for you slowpokes in the back.
http://www.elle.com/culture/celebrit...source=twitter
|
|
|