Hip Hop, Feminism, and White Girls

     Recently I decided to embark on a journey to help a friend find an online debate discussing gender. Although I have been a participant in many online debates, it was increasingly difficult to find people fighting over gender when I was actively trying to find them (alas that is how it always seems to be). Nevertheless, I searched up every controversial feminist video and article I could think of and while there was retaliation, the video that jogged my memory best was that of Lily Allen’s music video "Hard Out Here". It was a music video she released in 2014 that was meant to address the issues women face in the music and entertainment industry, particularly in the genre of hip hop. In the video she even goes so far as to reference Robin Thicke’s controversial music video to “Blurred Lines”. Even in this small example, the way gender is expressed in both films provides a stark contrast to the way our culture talks about men and women.

     However, her video received heavy backlash from critics, but not for pointing out flaws in the industry. The black community was heavily outraged by her video and my high school friend at the time who was of black background, shared that outrage with me when it was first released. At first, I was very confused along with the rest of the white feminists I knew and could see online. Lily Allen was addressing the sexism in the industry and owning the derogatory way women are treated in the same manner that gay people can reclaim the word f*ggot and black people have reclaimed the word n*gger. So… What’s the big deal?

     In order to understand, one must watch the music video carefully. At the beginning of the song introduction, the camera pans into a cliché hip hop music video- a video depicting a bunch of minority women twerking and dressed in clothing that is not just reminiscent of hip hop videos but the culture that many black women simply identify with (The one pale woman is Asian, not white). None of the other women in the video, aside from Lily Allen, are white and it makes a very stark contrast to the kind of sexism that comes into play here.

     To recognize the outrage, one has to understand the black community. For a lot of black women, the culture that Lily Allen was utilizing was not her own culture to exploit or critique. Twerking and clothing of that nature do not cross a simple feminist line, but also a racial line. White women are rarely depicted in a manner that Lily Allen addresses and by using all black women to enforce her point, she aided in reigniting the conversation .

     Since the release of this video, I have become aware of an increasing divide between white feminists and feminists of color. One argument being that white feminism claims that all women are discriminated against equally, and that feminists of color claim that white women have privilege that does not compare to the discrimination that women of color face. With white artists like Iggy Azalea and Lily Allen adopting the black culture for a personal gain and profit, many feminists of color have argued that it is appropriating the culture and further diminishing the impacts and significance that people of color can contribute to society at large.

     The exploitation of black culture by white people has been an increasing problem for the past century, but it has come to my attention only in the recent decade that feminism has become divided between racial lines as well.