8 Taylor Swift as White Icon

Taylor Swift has been criticized for her feminism, which comes across as focused on white women only. Issues of race have often been raised with the superstar, and many feel that she doesn’t speak up enough. This chapter will explore Swift’s voice when it comes to racial issues and examine the controversies she has found herself in due to racial missteps. While Swift has not spoken as frequently or directly as we believe she should about ongoing issues regarding racism, we shouldn’t overlook what she has done and how she has made an impact on voter registration (as discussed in Chapter 5 of this book). Despite criticisms, which are valid, Swift does have a record of speaking out on social media in favor of Black Lives Matter and in promoting racial justice.

For example, in 2020, Swift engaged on social media in a few different posts to stand up for social and racial justice. On May 29, 2020, she responded to then-President Donald Trump, after he tweeted a disgusting take on the murder of George Floyd. She tweeted, “After stoking the fires of white supremacy your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November @donaldtrump” (Swift, 2020a). Swift tweeted again during a surge in the Black Lives Matter movement on June 9, 2020: “Racial injustice has been ingrained deeply into local and state governments, and changes MUST be made there. In order for policies to change, we need to elect people who will fight against police brutality and racism of any kind. #BlackLivesMatter” (Swift, 2020b).

Swift responded to that tweet with another one, saying, “This article written by @barackobama is a fascinating read about changing policy at the state and local levels” and she attached a link to the article (Swift 2020c). This tweet in particular was important, because she was not claiming to have all the information, she was using her platform to amplify a Black voice, and she was showing her fans how important it is to educate themselves about racism in order to fight it. By sharing this article from former President Barack Obama on ways to combat systemic racism, she was sharing an important resource about a topic that she isn’t an expert on. She wasn’t centering her own experiences or knowledge; she was encouraging education. By doing that, she showed the millions of people who saw the tweet that they can also educate themselves and do the work to find reliable sources. Nobody needs to live in ignorance about topics that don’t directly impact them, and Swift demonstrated this.

She has also spoken out on the controversy surrounding the removal of confederate monuments throughout the South. On June 12, 2020, Swift wrote, “As a Tennessean, it makes me sick that there are monuments standing in our state that celebrate racist historical figures who did evil things. Edward Carmack and Nathan Bedford Forrest were DESPICABLE figures in our state history and should be treated as such” (Swift, 2020d). She named the people whose statues were in question within the specific context of Tennessee, perhaps giving her fans information they could use to do more research. She also invoked her ethos as a resident of the state, and she put government officials on notice that not all Tennesseans were complacent about racial issues nor would they sit silently while the state glorified past racist leaders. She stood firmly on the side of racial justice, and she used her enormous platform to do so.

That said, Swift has received backlash over several of her songs due to racism. Most recently, there are some questionable lyrics in the song “I Hate It Here” from The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD). The song says, “My friends used to play a game where / We would pick a decade / We wished we could live in instead of this / I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists and getting married off for / the highest bid.” These lines have been critiqued for viewing racism through rose-colored glasses and not emphasizing how prominent and horrific slavery actually was. While she frames the lyric as a childhood game, and children don’t necessarily know as much about history as adults do, many have argued that she should have left these lines out.

The next verse counters her desire to live in that decade at all, as she wrote, “nostalgia is a mind’s trick / If I’d been there, I’d hate it.” The point of mentioning racism (and patriarchy) in that time period seems to come from a place of recognizing that she doesn’t (or at least didn’t as a child) understand the gravity of the worst parts of the time period. Taken as a whole, the message of the song is about how the world is a difficult place to be in. Swift then sings that she chooses to avoid it all by going to “secret gardens” in her mind. Escaping harsh realities isn’t an ideal way to address real world issues or one’s problems, but the point of the song seems to be how low, helpless, and incapable Swift has felt in certain situations; therefore, a coping mechanism has been to leave reality behind and find somewhere calm in “the lunar valleys” of her mind. This is a common technique in therapy, in which patients can work on safe places and containers in their minds in order to compartmentalize difficulties so they can function day-to-day. That said, it is privilege that allows anybody to escape pressing social problems. If racism isn’t your lived experience, as it isn’t for Swift, then you can afford to “escape” in your mind and gloss over the historical facts and everyday realities of systems of oppression.

From a less interior perspective, Swift’s “Shake It Off” video—in which she features many styles of dance and seems to be goofily trying to fit into each one—has been criticized for its depiction of racialized women. Not only does the video seem to engage in cultural appropriation, which we’ll cover in the next section, but the way each group of dancers was featured seems to marginalize the sequence featuring Black women and twerking. Swift cheekily tries out each style of dance, from ballet to break dancing to cheerleading, but when it comes to twerking, her reaction is overly amused and her gaze prompts viewers to see the Black women as more exotic and Other than any of the other groups of dancers in the video. In a subtle way, Swift is signaling to her fans that she’s still very white and remains aloof from any styles that are too ethnic or “extreme.”

According to Dubrofsky (2016), artists like Swift may be “performing behavior as distinct from their authentic self, reassuring audiences there is an authentic (white) self under the performance. This authentic self is presented as stable, a core identity most naturally enacted by white bodies, brought into relief by performing otherness” (p. 184). This shows up in Swift’s contrast to each group of dancers in the video, and her “neutral” authentic self is represented at the end of the video when she’s dancing freestyle with other people who are “normal.” The video highlights the differences between everyday people (dancing at the end of the video) and professionals (the dancers throughout the bulk of the video), and these distinctions enhance the divide between whiteness and Blackness. As a white woman in the United States, Swift holds certain privileges, including being seen as having a higher social status than anyone who is not white-presenting.

Further, the scene in “Shake It Off” featuring the Black women and Swift shows very little of the women’s faces. While twerking is a dance focused in the hips and butt, the video can be critiqued for dehumanizing the dancers by cutting off their heads and faces. Those who identify with Swift as the protagonist of the video might also find themselves feeling distant from the Black women and perhaps viewing them as objects rather than subjects. While none of this appears to be purposeful, the video reinforces stereotypes and divisiveness about race. Swift’s whiteness is on display, as her difference from the Black women is exaggerated. Because Swift is a white woman, she cannot escape the reality of her privilege and societal beliefs about supremacy and personhood. White people often do not face as many prejudices or biases in school, work, or online.

Some people might argue that Swift’s whiteness is irrelevant, but they are failing to acknowledge that being white is a part of her identity, just as race or ethnicity would be a part of any person’s identity. “White power is secured through its insidious invisibility” (Prins, 2020, p. 145), and the phrase “I don’t see race” fails to acknowledge difference. It erases identity and makes it easier for privilege and supremacy to rule without pushback. Although people might not mean to do harm when they say “I don’t see race,” a person’s race or ethnicity makes up much of who they are, the culture they grew up with, and how they think. So when a person says they do not see race, they are claiming to be unable to look deeper into who that person is and how they see the world.

The “Shake It Off” video might also be criticized for cultural appropriation, which is “defined as the taking of a valuable, yet reusable or non-exhaustible aspect, of another individual’s culture (usually a symbol or a practice), for one’s own use, where the taker knows what she is doing (or reasonably should know), and where the context of this taking is contested” (Lenard & Balint, 2020, p. 338). While scholars have unpacked appropriation in much more depth, recognizing that cultural appreciation and cultural engagement are more positive ways of understanding diversity, they make a distinction that appropriation has a contested element to it, meaning that the person taking it is doing so with awareness and malicious intent or in misrepresented ways. Further, Matthes (2019) noted that “such acts [of appropriation] can manifest and/or exacerbate underlying inequalities. In other words, what makes cultural appropriation wrong, when it is wrongful, is the way it interacts with the oppression of certain cultural group members” (p. 1005).

The video for “Wildest Dreams” seems to fall into this definition. The video features Swift as a movie star filming in Africa, and it depicts the continent without any Black people and through colonialist terms and images. Authors from Kenya and Uganda expressed their dismay at the video’s glamorization of Africa’s colonial past: “We are shocked to think that in 2015, Taylor Swift, her record label and her video production group would think it was OK to film a video that presents a glamorous version of the white colonial fantasy of Africa” (Rutabingwa & Arinaitwe, 2015). The authors unpack what colonialism really was and suggest that depictions of Africa are often monolithic and damaging. This is where cultural appropriation goes wrong. While Swift is cosplaying colonialism in this particular video, she’s also appropriating the culture of the continent by making it into a stereotype and focusing only on what white people imposed on indigenous people. She’s essentially erasing the multiplicity of cultures found in Africa in favor of a white romanticized dream. That said, all proceeds of the video go to the African Parks Foundation to protect and conserve wild animals. It is unclear whether or not Swift’s generosity was a result of the criticism of the video.

Further questions around race and Swift’s actions involve Matty Healy, lead singer of The 1975. She dated him in 2023, and with the release of 2024’s TTPD album, we learned more about their relationship, at least from the perspective of her art. People didn’t want to believe that she would date him, as he is openly racist and misogynistic (Vivinetto & Brockington, 2024), but apparently she did, and there was more to it than the public first realized. Further, during her “fling” with him, she remixed “Karma” with Ice Spice, a woman of color, and many saw that as an attempt to temper the bad press and image Healy brought to Swift’s life (Rosenblatt, 2023).

Swift’s whiteness can influence her stance when it comes to politics. Swift has received criticism for not speaking out about the 2024 humanitarian situation in Gaza. Swift has many fans from different backgrounds, and she wants to be able to appeal to all of them. With the situation in Gaza, opinions are divided, so it seems that in order to avoid any backlash from either side, she hasn’t said anything, at least not explicitly. Sometimes, white people will not be able to see things from the perspective of a minority group. Empathy and perspective-taking can be difficult when we don’t identify with people who are different than we are. Like everybody else, Swift’s whiteness influences her political views and is connected to how she was raised, her cultural background, and her middle-class upbringing. Therefore, it should be no surprise that there is a connection between Swift’s whiteness and the policies she is outspoken about.

Overall, there’s privilege in remaining neutral, and it can be difficult for celebrities to speak up when it doesn’t benefit them and will likely create intense backlash. They may also avoid speaking up due to personal safety reasons. We cannot know all of the reasons for remaining neutral when it comes to difficult issues, but we do know that taking a stand or making a statement is fraught for any public figure. That said, from a social justice perspective, we call on Swift to speak up, as we know she can and as we know she has done in the past. She may lose fans any time she opens her mouth; however, racial justice is one of the most important and pressing issues of our time, and world events constantly point to the need for anti-racist work and activism. We see room for Swift to improve her allyship to people of color.

References

Dubrofsky, R. E. (2016). A vernacular of surveillance: Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus perform white authenticity. Surveillance & Society, 14(2), 184-196.

Lenard, P. T., & Balint, P. (2020). What is (the wrong of) cultural appropriation?. Ethnicities, 20(2), 331-352.

Matthes, E. H. (2019). Cultural appropriation and oppression. Philosophical Studies, 176, 1003-1013.

Prins, A. (2020). From awkward teen girl to Aryan goddess meme: Taylor Swift and the hijacking of star texts. Celebrity studies, 11(1), 144-148.

Rosenblatt, K. (25 May 2023). Taylor Swift’s collaboration with Ice Spice raises eyebrows amid Matty Healy backlash. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/taylor-swift-ice-spice-collaboration-matty-healy-backlash-rcna86231

Rutabingwa, V. and Arinaitwe J. K. (1 September 2015). Taylor Swift Is Dreaming Of A Very White Africa. Goats and Soda. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/09/01/436653602/taylor-swift-is-dreaming-of-a-very-white-africa

Swift, T. [@taylorswift13]. (2020a, May 29) After stoking the fires of white supremacy your entire presidency, you have the nerve [Post]. X. https://x.com/taylorswift13/status/1266392274549776387?lang=en

Swift, T. [@taylorswift13]. (2020b, June 9). Racial injustice has been ingrained deeply into local and state governments [Post]. X. https://x.com/taylorswift13/status/1270432961591205888?s=46

Swift, T. [@taylorswift13]. (2020c, June 9). This article written by @barackobama is a fascinating read about changing policy [Post]. X. https://x.com/taylorswift13/status/1270432964976009219?lang=en

Swift, T. [@taylorswift13]. (2020d, June 12). As a Tennessean, it makes me sick that there are monuments standing in our state that celebrate racist [Post]. X. https://x.com/taylorswift13/status/1271534712423698434?lang=en

Swift, T. (2024). I Hate It Here. The Tortured Poets Department.

Vivinetto, G. & Brockington, A. (18 April 2024). Taylor Swift and Matty Healy’s controversial relationship, explained. Today.com. https://www.today.com/popculture/taylor-swift-matty-healy-relationship-explained-rcna148498