Okay, so I think we all know about Taylor Swift being interrupted last year at the VMA’s right? Right. Kanye West caught all kinds of hell for it, and even for his subsequent apologies. So, then why is the video I linked her performance from this year’s show? You can’t convince me that you don’t want to talk about the past when you do a performance all about it. Barefoot, standing like a broken doll, and all but crying your way through the whole thing. Ooh, a whole stage show geared to present this image of delicate white femininity while you sing about your innocence being violated. By a scary black man.
Gee, that’s not a coded message we’ve seen before at all. Oh wait, let’s talk about the idea of white people feeling violated by black people “not knowing their place” and what that’s meant historically to American society. Better yet, let’s really dig down into why we’re singing about violated innocence like being interrupted on stage is at all equivalent to being physically assaulted. Oh, but then we might have to get into who interrupted her and whether this would be such a big deal if the racial makeup was different.
I’m certain someone will swear she didn’t mean to stir up the kind of images that she did. Especially in this “post racial” society. Which, if we were remotely post-racial might hold some water. Not a lot. But some. As we’re not actually post anything? Intent (or lack thereof) only carries so much weight before it doesn’t matter why you’re encouraging the same virulent hate that spewed last year in the immediate aftermath of Kanye’s bad manners. Yes, I said bad manners. Because being rude is what he’s guilty of and not much else. He’s a jackass with issues that he let spill all over her big moment. That sucks. But, that’s not a reason to still be playing the victim a year later and using dog whistle racism as a subtext in your performance.
Taylor Swift’s paean to being Kanye’s “victim” makes me want to roll my eyes at her routine as well as some of the reactions to it. Because if this what happens when someone is rude to a white woman in public we really haven’t come past race at all. Not even a little bit. In fact, while we’re on the subject of coded language and images let’s talk about the phrase “White Women’s Tears” and why it seems to be both problematic and accurate in this situation. There’s a case that could be made for inherent misogyny in the way the phrase is used. After all Taylor’s feelings were undoubtedly hurt and she’s got a right to express that pain right? Right. So, as a musician she expresses those emotions in the way that best suits her and we shouldn’t read more into it than her telling her side of the story.
Except she’s not expressing those emotions in a vacuum, and she’s well aware of the racial subtext after a year of her fans using racial epithets about Kanye at every turn. She’s had a year to debut this song (especially since according to her camp she wrote it in her diary last year) but she held onto it for a publicity stunt last night. There’s some complicated historical and social subtext tangled up in the use of tears this way, and in the reaction to those tears. It’s a subtext that makes the phrase “White Woman’s Tears” a convenient shorthand for a situation that boils down to a white woman wielding her tears as a weapon against a POC. We’re back to intent and the question of whether those tears (genuine or otherwise) and their ability to derail and/or escalate a situation can be separated out from the emotions that may be prompting them.
Personally, I look at the reaction to Kanye’s interruption of Taylor Swift and I think that we have a long way to go before the major concern is the terminology and not the act. But then, I’m not a white woman and my tears don’t have any power so I’m obviously biased by my experiences with the phenomenon. This time the goal of the tears is likely to generate some more sympathy, but we can’t ignore the death threats against him that were generated a year ago, or the ones that might have been generated tonight.
ETA: So, a further dissection of the lyrics was called for by a few commenters on another blog. And I went digging. Okay, let’s assume she’s not singing about her violated innocence and the whole song is about Kanye. That’s…not an improvement. We’ve still got her stage show based around White Damsel (love that one by the way), poorly written lyrics (I recognize that this one was a given) that left me and whole lot of other people thinking she was singing about herself with a verse aimed at Kanye, and for an added bonus she’s infantilizing a grown man. So we’re right back to coded images, complete with a White Man’s Burden’esque routine about about childlike black people. Again, in a country with a long history of using such images to justify terrible things. Since I know someone will claim (and probably already has) that any complaining is just proof that Taylor Swift cannot win with “those people” let me point out that mashing up one racist coded image with another isn’t exactly new or any less offensive. The truth is she cannot win as long as she’s using racism as currency. Once people stop doing that? Everyone wins.
White Women, Tears, and Coded Images -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman
I had somehow managed to miss that particular controversy until I read your post, but are you really sure it is only WHITE women tears that lead to this? Speaking for myself, of the three times I’ve seen men get up in arms because of a woman’s tears in the States, the victims (in my book they are victims if they are driven to tears) were Hispanic, Black, and technically white, although many bigots would say that a Persian is not white. In every case, most males in sight EXCEPT the people closest racially to the woman reacted.
In the first case, it was a white guy beating his Hispanic wife next to a car stopped in traffic, and the relatives in the car not only did not stop him, but tried to mess with us when we demanded he stops. The police ended handcuffing them before they went to chase the guy who ran before they arrived.
In the second case, Black people walked past while some Korean guys chased off a black guy slapping a black woman who looked like a prostitute. I admit that I did not intervene either (I’m of Creole descent) but in my case it was because I was in a bad neighborhood and did not want to get into something I did not understand.
In the third case, it was a Iranian contractor to had left his wife in the car in the sun while he was working on a mill for hours, and who yelled his head off at her for getting out of the car. She started crying and the security guard immediately called me (as the guy who had contracted him) and the company owner… that resulted in us leading his wife into an air-conditioned office, and leaving her with our single Muslim office worker. Afterward, she told me that we fucked up and made trouble for the wife, that we would have been better off pretending not to notice, and that we simply did not understand the family’s culture. For a while, the boss worried we were going to get sued.
Sebastian, there are large nation-wide trends that aren’t covered by your anecdotes. I personally have never seen any man get “up in arms” at any woman’s tears; that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
On the other hand, I am confused by this song. I’d gotten the impression that Kanye wrote it for her, or that it was supposed to be an acceptance of his apology.
As near as I can tell after reading someone’s transcript of the lyrics (I edited the post at ABW to reflect the new info and it should eventually crosspost) she is forgiving him by chalking up his behavior to childishness. Which is a whole other bag of coded racial images that aren’t an improvement and that she conflated with her White Damsel routine.
Wasn’t he being childish? Or at least isn’t that the most charitable possible way of interpreting his actions?
No, I have to agree with the OP, casting his actions as childlike does have some racialist connotations.
The most “charitable” way to interpret his actions would be to say that Kanye West as an individual is a dick, and to critique him personally for rudeness, holding him to the same standard as you’d hold any entertainer.
Analogy: I don’t like the president. I think he’s pretty dumb where it matters. I could criticize him for what I think his defects are or I could criticize him by writing about how dreadful it is that black Americans suffer educational defects because of our racist system. The second approach might be viewed as more charitable, but really I’m just using code and saying “black people r stoopd”. At least if it’s personalized there’s a plausible case that I just think this one black guy is dumb, not all black guys.
“or I could criticize him by writing about how dreadful it is that black Americans suffer educational defects because of our racist system. The second approach might be viewed as more charitable, but really I’m just using code and saying “black people r stoopd”.”
Sure. But are you saying that Taylor Swift was suggesting that Kanye was childish because of something about black people or black culture? Because I don’t see where that is at all. It looks like she is calling him and his behavior childish. Which seems pretty close to accurate, and not particularly racially charged especially considering his actual behavior.
Now if she called him childish when he was really acting appropriately, that might have been a problem. But in reality, he really was acting in a childishly boorish way–even more than we normally expect from celebrities of any race.
So far as I can tell, she critiqued him and his behavior personally. Where do you see otherwise?
I am trying REALLY hard to see this from the OP’s point of view (it doesn’t help that I can’t see the video anymore, and that the lyrics to the song aren’t posted, and that I can’t google them because the name of the song isn’t posted) but I am just not seeing the evidence of this being racially motivated. Can someone please outline the evidence for that?
@Three Ninjas: She criticized Kanye for being childish. Black people were often stereotyped as being childish. Thus: Racism.
@DapperDanMan Not necessarily. Growing up, I had no idea of many of the stereotypes that used to be applied to black people. I only heard about them through sites like this. We may not be living in a perfectly colour-blind era, but some images have well and truly faded for many young people.
Sure, she’s a performer and it’s to be expected she’ll make as much out of the drama as she can (even if she says just wants to ‘move on’). I don’t think ‘White Woman’s Tears’ comes into this, just ‘Taylor Swift’s Tears’.
Madhoff is a greedy scumbag. Jewish people were often stereotyped as greedy. Thus: the first statement is Anti-Semitic.
Bullshit.
Madhoff is an criminal, and West has poor impulse control and little concern for others. Neither are racial traits, and being from a group that has been stereotyped does not mean that you are safe from criticism.
As for Taylor Swift, she would’ve done better, in my eyes, to just say ‘What a jerk, get over yourself’, but as an entertainer, she’s got to milk the situation for what it’s worth. Guess what, that has nothing to do with her gender or race.
As a domestic violence counselor of people of all races I am very disturbed by the current popularity of the phrase “white women’s tears”. Would it be ok if I made a post about how “jew tears” cause laws to be made in government that put poor people in a lesser position in society? NO, absolutely not even if there are many people that identify as Jewish who are involved in national finance.
There needs to be a dialog about race, but the current one popularized by feminist and so-called “anti-racism” blogs where it’s ok to blanket demonize “white women” in 2013 for historical oppression minorities is reductionist and ultimately, racist.