When Beyoncé lost the Album of the Year award to Adele I couldn’t help but feel that she lost because she was black. If a white women had produced an album that crossed genre barriers and created an hour long visual to accompany it, there would be no discussion, she would have beat Adele. However, the Grammys felt differently about a black woman producing that type of body of work. The Grammys lashed out at Beyoncé because she didn’t “stay in her place.” Beyoncé didn’t produce an album that qualified strictly as a pop album or a hip-hop album, and for the Grammys, that was too much. They couldn’t fathom the thought of a black woman being more than a pop star or hip-hop artist. So they reacted by giving her an award for the most bootleg category they could think of, “Best Urban Contemporary Album”, and they called it a day.
But what concerns me the most is the strong similarity in response by white people to Beyoncé’s loss and President Agent Orange winning the election. In a Pitchfork interview, Recording Academy President Neil Portnow said “I don’t think there’s a race problem at all” in response to allegations that Beyoncé lost because the Grammys are racist. When I saw that I was more than annoyed, I was pissed. This sounded way too familiar. When President Agent Orange won the election there was a clip of CNN correspondent Van Jones saying that the election outcome was a result of “Whitelash.” Meaning, white people were mad because we had a black President so they lashed out and elected the most bigoted candidate they could find. The immediate response to that clip being played everywhere was white people crying “I’M NOT RACIST! NOT ALL PRESIDENT AGENT ORANGE SUPPORTERS ARE RACIST!” And as per usual they were wrong. President Agent Orange’s whole platform was racism, xenophobia, homophobia, ablism, and every other offensive thing you can think of. There were no policies, there were no plans, just bigotry. White people may have felt that they were voting against the political elites but they failed to realize one thing. By ignoring the racism spewed throughout his “campaign” you aided in racism, and therefore you are, oh my gosh wait for it, a racist. So yeah Neil Portnow, there is a race problem, and you sir are apart of it. By ignoring the race problem in America you don’t make it disappear. White people wake up, there is no post-racial society there is no kumbaya. Obama’s presidency didn’t end mass incarceration, the normalization of black bodies falling at the hands of the police, and the wealth gap between black and white people. It’s all still very much here.
It’s been about three months since election night, about one month since President Agent Orange’s regime, and white people are still trying to ignore the problem of racism. They still haven’t learned how to empathize. You would think that the Muslim Ban and the executive orders to increase police protection coming out in the first month would help white people to realize that we have some real issues in America. But because their privilege has still protected them throughout this sh*t show we’ve been calling a presidency, white people continue to fail to look at the big issues here. It’s sad.
