So, Blake Lively’s been shamed for her ‘LA face with an Oakland booty’ Instagram caption. The Internet was alive yesterday as the war between it’s-just-a-joke-calm-down-everything-isn’t-about-race and I-could-write-a-textbook-on-why-this-is-problematic factions blazed on.
Lively’s racist faux pas is a perfect example of everyone wanting to act black and take black culture but nobody actually wanting to be black. It’s akin to white people screaming the lyrics to Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Alright’ as if the song is theirs, blissfully unaware of the specific sociocultural experiences Kendrick went through as a black man to be able to write that poetry for black people.
It’s that white kid at your high school who everyone called ‘the blackest white guy’ because he listened to Drake and watched NBA. It’s white girls stumbling around clubs shouting about their ‘black booty’ with unabashed, privileged pride. Just as Lively did.
When anything made by black people becomes trendy or ‘acceptable’ in mainstream media, we white people have to have it. And then we pretend we have a right to it or we were the ones who invented it. Whether it’s rebranding cornrows as ‘boxer braids’ or defending, to the death, the right for white people to have dreadlocks.
At least somewhere in her subconscious Blake Lively knew Oakland is a poor, predominantly black neighborhood. Having an Oakland booty is hot – being from Oakland is not.
And that’s what Blake Lively did. She took a Sir Mix-A-Lot lyric, a song written for black women that deliberately went against the beauty standard of the time, and she made it about herself. Because that’s what white women do, everything has always been about us. We’ve been brought up knowing we can have anything.
It’s not that Blake Lively knew the weight of what she was saying, to her it would have meant next to nothing. That’s where her privilege comes in, she hasn’t lived her whole life with racist micro aggressions, fighting against a culture that favours white beauty standards. She doesn’t see how in one flippant social media post she could make light of the years of oppression and struggle for black women, while simultaneously objectifying their bodies.
We white people do it all the time. If you’re a white person sitting there reading this, shaking your head like, “Nope, not me, I don’t do it. I’m not racist I volunteered in a Tanzanian orphanage and my best friend is Chinese.” I’m telling you, from white person to another, you know you’ve done it.
Now that big butt’s are in fashion we all want to squat our way to a booty, but do we want to be Lil Kim slowly whitening her skin because when you look the hell around Hollywood black women are generally light skinned? Nah.
We like black music but only if it’s nicely commoditized. Only if it’s glamorised, sexualized and packaged up to sell being black as a lifestyle you can own if you shop at Culture Kings enough. Do we want to hear Indigenous Australian rappers like Jimblah fleshing out their people’s years of oppression in this colonial country of ours against a beat? Nah.
At least somewhere in her subconscious Blake Lively knew Oakland is a poor, predominantly black neighborhood. Having an Oakland booty is hot – being from Oakland is not.
Author JE Reich wrote: “In the end, it touts a diametrical opposition: that Los Angeles can be equated to elegance and/or beauty (read: whiteness), and that Oakland is its foil (read: blackness).”
Or in the words of comedian Paul Mooney during his appearance on Chappelle’s Show: “Everyone wanna be a n***a…but nobody wanna be a n***a’’.
They fail to recognize their intersectionality. This is why whiteness needs to be blacked. With a big black schlong. Oy vey, now I’m doing it!
Jesus Christ. Get over yourself women.