The media focus on the bodies of black women diverts attention away from the very real problem of racist social and economic policies in the US
From mad love to bad blood? Taylor Swift’s white saviour complex gets her into trouble with Nikki Minaj, but this ‘feud’ goes beyond just a Twitter argument. The co-option of rap and hip-hop by the imperialist culture industry has overshadowed its radical origins and potential, contributing to the media’s constant obsession in hyper-contextualising black women in the entertainment industry.
The recent grievances made by Nikki about Taylor and the music industry is just one example of this. It is quite easy to parrot the tens of thousands of tweets by both Nikki’s fans and activists that have rightly concluded that there is and always has been racism in the music industry. If Nikki Minaj was not black, she would not be under as much scrutiny nor forced by the media to be an emblem for black hyper-sexuality – as, indeed, her counterparts Miley Cirus and Katy Perry are not. The sexual exploitation of black female subjects like Nikki has also created the means to police them. The political expression that forms the essence of hip-hop has been ignored by mainstream media and shaped by disparaging gendered images of black men as hyper-violent and self-destructive, which, in turn, has reduced the agency of black women to their sexual appeal.
It is also true that Taylor Swift and her luxury brand of faux-feminism hold more weight in exposing the systemic white supremacy of institutions that continuously silence black women and women of colour, rather than elevating women into equality. It is also very easy to make accusations of respectability-politics onto powerful figures such as Beyoncé and her supposed ‘feminist anthem’ in the form of her fourth and fifth studio albums 4 and most recently Beyoncé. However, in a world run by capitalist ideals, this often entails re-articulating these values in the form of visual cues for the purpose of selling music. You could argue that Nikki Minaj has also implicated herself in the consumer identity that profits off her body and has enabled the ‘jezebel’ stereotype to be reinforced in mainstream hip-hop.
But let’s go back to the beginning. The messages in hip-hop started to change as corporations started eating at independent record labels. With the passing of the Telecommunications Act in 1996, large media corporations engineered the phasing out of black-owned radio and television stations. Today, only 3.4 per cent of all radio stations and 0.6 per cent of all TV stations are black-owned. Media corporations have therefore played a detrimental role in reshaping hip-hop, with white corporations policing black artists through green-lighting misogynistic, sexist, racist and hyper-violent imagery that has now become the signifier of what hip-hop means today.
The fact remains that there is a perpetual need to commodify black women’s sexuality and the most accessible images of this lie in the entertainment industry. However, hinging the discourse on black entertainers like Nikki Minaj and Beyoncé becomes a distraction from the wider state of black women. The rapidly changing structure of hip-hop has forced an antagonism towards the ethics of black revolutionaries such as the Black Panthers, who have succumbed to capitalism as a result of the imprisonment, exile and murder of their own, leading to most resistance being neutralised. This really is where capitalism, racism and gender intersect. The racially motivated shooting of Michael Brown that sparked the Ferguson protests resulted in nationwide dissent against the police brutality of African Americans. This exposed the capitalist legislation on private property found in laws such as ‘Stand Your Ground’ that sheds light on the institutional racism justifying the violence on black bodies. This has perpetuated the marginalisation, oppression and ultimate dehumanisation of black women, as well as the silencing of their collective agency. The double consciousness of black women is met with an epistemic violence from both dominant and alternative systems of representation. The government polices black women by devaluing their reproduction with racist social and economic policies.
The brutal murder of 28-year-old activist Sandra Bland by a racist militarised police state led to global petitions and protests for investigations into her death, which was ruled by police as a suicide by hanging in her jail cell. The violence Sandra Bland endured reflects the long history of the US in using the profit system of capitalism – her arrest followed a minor traffic violation – to racially target and exploit black subjects, putting black women in further jeopardy. By watching Bland’s 15-second videos entitled ‘Sandy Speaks’, one can tell she was an outspoken advocate for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in which she vented her frustrations with the racist structures of the state. Yet, her own story remains erased and she becomes a victim deprived of the spirit and agency she expressed in life.
The cultural integrity of hip-hop has been compromised and the racialised misogyny of the entertainment industry and media means that black female artists are scrutinised on deeper epistemic levels. Editorial agendas have informed journalism through the fetishisation of black womanhood. In the African-American context in particular, the public and socio-political voices of African-American female discontentment are often overlooked in popular black music and culture. Black women in the entertainment industry are forced to re-inscribe stereotypical performative identities to make sense of their gendered identity and doing this within a racial context proves to be the most challenging.
Singer, songwriter and notable civil rights activist Harry Belafonte is outspoken in his anti-capitalist sentiment, and in providing the financial aid needed to bail out many jailed civil rights activists (which included Martin Luther King Jr.), he describes “unbridled capitalism” as the ultimate enemy, and has publicly criticised high profile celebrities like Jay Z and Beyoncé for turning their backs on social responsibility. The responsibility, argues Belafonte, lies with black celebrities to participate in popular struggle. Janelle Monae and Jidenna recently did just that in Philadelphia by leading a rally against police brutality. In public interviews, Monae has in fact expressed her passion for instrumentalising change in communities. Many high profile black celebrities in the entertainment industry, or otherwise, participate in similar ways, such as young actress Amandla Stenberg and her recent evaluations of the appropriation of black culture in her viral educational video, “Don’t Cash Crop My Cornrows”. Even so, as Belafonte explains there is a clear disconnect with current black celebrities, such as Jay Z and Beyoncé, in being vigilant towards the ills of capitalism and the violence it enacts on working class black people, particularly when they are the beneficiaries of capitalism themselves. It is easy to identify with the plight of black bodies, all the while ignoring the roles celebrities play in profiting from the capitalist structure that simultaneously marginalises them for their race. Therefore, in order to advocate for black women, one must vehemently stand against capitalism, state violence, police brutality and the racism that has ultimately poisoned our societies and dehumanised the bodies of black subjects.
Now is the time to create a true camaraderie between black celebrities and progressive activists in critically assessing and being watchful of both the imperialist, capitalist culture industry they are part of and the communities from which they hail.
Image from: http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/465045/amas-2011-taylor-swift-nicki-minaj-win-big-on-ladies-night