So Some Of You Think Taylor Swift's Last Video Is Racist?

Hip hop Taylor

I know that Iman adores this new Taylor Swift’s pop tune, but I am not going to write about the song here, only about the video, which has just unleashed a series of indignations all over the internet: many people think the music video for  ‘Shake It Off’ is very racist!

All Taylor Swift is guilty of is shaking her skinny ass while wearing accouterments to interpret different characters, a ballerina, a sort of Lady Gaga, a break dancer, a female rapper, a cheerleader, (anybody caught this Toni Basil rip-off?) like a girl in search of a personality crisis. But if you find this offensive, well be prepared to be offended by a Gap commercial, and about anything in life? And please don’t open your TV, don’t watch any sitcoms, don’t watch SNL, don’t even think about listening to any stand-up comedians. Swift wasn’t even trying to be funny, critical, or a comedian, she just wanted to dance! And I can’t believe I am defending this bubble-gum-head girl.

‘haven’t watched the taylor swift video and I don’t need to watch it to tell you that it’s inherently offensive and ultimately harmful’, twitted Odd Future’s Earl Sweatshirt, ‘perpetuating black stereotypes to the same demographic of white girls who hide their prejudice by proclaiming their love of the culture’… ‘for instance, those of you who are afraid of black people but love that in 2014 it’s ok for you to be trill or twerk or say nigga’

And yeah he has a point about the perpetuation of stereotypes and the appropriation of the black culture by white people – didn’t Justin Timberlake just call Madonna his ‘Ninja’ (a substitute for nigga) and caused an outrage? It was also ridiculous, may be he really meant ninja, you know, the Japanese warrior? So now the politically correct culture has extended to obscure alternative words, and this is becoming insane. In Swift’s case, yes there is tweaking in the video but also a lot of ultra thin and fit bodies bouncing in the air, a lot of anorexic white ballerinas,… shouldn’t they be offended too? Shouldn’t Lady Gaga be offended too? Taylor Swift is about as offensive for any culture as a slice of pineapple on a pizza. It should not be there, but you remove it and it doesn’t make any difference for the rest of the pizza. Yes, she is using black stereotypes and looks goofy as a break dancer in a red sport jacket, but she does what every white little girl already does (and I observe a lot of them believe me) wearing a Notorious BIG shirt with oversized earing and ripped short jeans to go with a blonde ponytail, because it looks cool. Hip hop clothes are what the kids wear these days and rap is what they listen to. So may be Taylor Swift is encouraging the trend here, may be she is appropriating black culture, but she is in no way an innovator, she is following the current trend, she is trying to be a bit edgy, and she just wants to dance,… badly.

There are a lot of Taylor Swift haters out there (and this is the subject of the song, right?) and they are trying very hard to find a good reason to dismiss and criticize her… if Taylor Swift is black people’s biggest problem I wonder what Ferguson, MO is.