The last 24 hours have been interesting to say the least. The hype around Lemonade finally led up to the release of a beautiful audiovisual project with some very powerful messages that touched a lot of people. And while there are aspects of the album everyone can relate to, there’s no denying that principally, it is a work of art aimed at empowering and validating black women. One of the more powerful things for me was seeing people like Zendaya and Amandla in the video, people who I look up to for the way they deal with having such large platforms at such a young age, and doing so much good with it. Seeing black females validated rather than derided for their blackness or femininity or age is something I can always use more of.
So while Lemonade is an album, and Beyoncé wants it to do well commercially and obviously that means appealing to more than ONLY black women, black women have a special connection to it. That’s not something we get often. Art that is meant to have widespread appeal but was made specifically with us in mind. And because we feel like this project is uniquely directed as us, we want our voices heard in the larger cultural conversation about it. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. But of course, a slew of think pieces (a lot of them written by white people) came out before a lot of black women had even caught their breath and thought about what Lemonade could mean for us. Why so many major publications thought it was fine to just have white people address Lemonade after its release (and inevitably misrepresent some of the project’s important features) is a mystery to me.
We here at Affinity, like a lot of people on twitter, weren’t entirely comfortable with this. My friend Alex wrote a great piece about why it’s maybe okay for white journalists to sit this one out, and let black people write some of the responses. Alex is a white guy, so even though I knew he’d handle the content of the article well, I was still a little unsure about him writing it. As helpful as it is to have a white person tell other white people the things they might ignore if a black person were to tell them (because, obviously we’re all just angry black women crying ‘racism’) it also sort of perpetuates the idea that we need white people to do that for us. Like yeah, having white allies and having them contribute to conversations is important and necessary. But things get a little shaky when it comes to what qualifies as respectful contributions and dialogue as opposed to speaking over black women.
I know Alex, I saw the conversation that led to him writing the article, I know it was in no way his intention to speak over us. But to some other people it might not come across that way, and I think navigating this issue is part of a larger conversation we need to have about the politics of race in the United States that extends beyond Lemonade. I appreciate Alex’s tone in his article, and in the conversations we’ve had before and after it was published, but I find myself tiptoeing and second-guessing my word choice when it comes to my criticisms of his article. And that in itself speaks to the larger problem.
I shouldn’t feel uncomfortable expressing my opinion, and I think maybe part of the reason I do is because I’ve been conditioned to privilege white voices and opinions. There’s a worry I only became conscious of while writing this piece that if I get too emotional I’ll annoy or push away the white ally. And I can’t have that, because then who would help insert my voice and cause into wider cultural conversation? But I need to stop thinking like that. Beyoncé wouldn’t want me to think like that. She would tell me my voice is valid on its own, and I can find a way to make it heard with or without white allies who would be scared off by me expressing my truth. And who am I to argue with Queen Bey?
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