Rachel Dolezal, former president of the NAACP in Seattle, Washington, caused quite a stir when she lied about her racial identity, which was white, and claimed to be black. She was eventually forced to leave her post at the NAACP. Dolezal didn’t feel that her white identity should in any way still the heart of blackness that beat within her. White Australian rapper Iggy Azalea mimicked the dialect of the hood in America to cash in on the desire to have white hip-hop stars equal the achievements of their black peers, much like the truly great Eminem. Eminem has paid homage to hip-hop culture with extraordinary talent and hard work, just as Justin Timberlake does with rhythm and blues, except, in the case of Timberlake, he picks and chooses his way through blackness. He’s black at awards time, not so much when it comes to taking heat with Janet Jackson over their controversial halftime Super Bowl performance in which he tore off part of her clothing at the end of their act. Timberlake proves that cultural critic Greg Tate is right: such white stars want everything but the burden of the blackness they sample. The credo of appropriators is “it happened to me too.” Blackness, that is, but not its costs or penalties. Moreover, these stars claim an outsider status without actually having to be outsiders.
The novelist Lionel Shriver threw an opening salvo in the newest installment of the writing wars to determine who could say what about whom. Shriver dropped her bomb in 2016 when she addressed the Brisbane Writers Festival and rode herd on her free speech horse against political correctness. Millennials, and the generation trailing them, are especially vulnerable on this score, Shriver argued, because they are in a race “to see who can be more righteous and aggrieved—who can replace the boring old civil rights generation with a spikier brand.” As Shriver sees it, the left has become all too nervous about living in the skin or brain or experiences of the other. The demand that folk write only about what they know or experience is utter nonsense to Shriver; it is suffocating orthodoxy that imperils the art of the novel. “Otherwise, all I could write about would be smart-alecky 59-year-old 5-foot-2-inch white women from North Carolina.” It’s easy to empathize with Shriver; after all, if you only write what you know, then you are left with precious little to write about.
Shriver’s argument, however, fails to see how other cultures—their people, their ideas, their identities—have always been treated as only fiction, have always been looted of their inherent value and forced to fit in to the schemes, worldviews, or novels of folk, especially white folk, who were invested in denying their own privilege and power to treat these other cultures just as they pleased. When Shriver talks about “free speech,” she gets the speech part right; but she only sees “free” from the perspective of the person doing the writing, not the one being written about. Shriver as a white writer is quite free to roam across the globe in search of whatever experiences or insights will light her way to a nuanced, engaged piece of fiction.
But that freedom is not merely artistic; in fact, her art, the art of white writers, rests on power relations that have left black culture at a disadvantage, vulnerable to literary cherry-picking. Shriver’s grumbling is dressed up as the will to free expression, which should characterize the art of writing in any truly liberated culture. But underneath her gripes are a body of ideas and identities that have been abused, and appropriated, against the will of other cultures, and used at the discretion of writers who pay no mind to the people whose experiences they seek to borrow. Those people of color, for instance, have been cogs in the cultural machinery of white writers. Of course the writers’ purpose might be a good one, such as telling a story that hasn’t been told. But if the folk whose story is told don’t have the opportunity to tell their own story, what is on the surface a good thing becomes a matter of who has the power and privilege to spin narratives.
We must also not overlook how the use of such experiences can reinforce beliefs about communities of color that have harmful political consequences, such as William Styron’s controversial novel The Confessions of Nat Turner, which painted Turner as a man more obsessed with violent sexual lust for a blonde teenager than political rebellion against slavery. Nor should we ignore how the appropriation of “minority” cultures by white writers with a political advantage leaves people of color little room to speak their truths in their own ways.
And we certainly can’t ignore how the more famous members of your tribe often get angry when they’re called on their appropriation. Fashion designer Marc Jacobs used candy-colored Etsy dreadlocks on mostly nonblack models in his 2016 fashion show, provoking ire and outrage. Critics claimed he trafficked in the worst sort of racial appropriation. Jacobs shot back at “all who cry ‘cultural appropriation’ or whatever nonsense about any race of skin color wearing their hair in a particular style or manner.” Jacobs displayed great insensitivity and ignorance when he argued that it’s “funny how you don’t criticize women of color for straightening their hair.” The reason for the lack of criticism may be simple: white folk have no corner on the straight-hair market, as witnessed by Asian and Latino follicles. Jacobs exposed his unconscious bias when he, of course, tried to claim the opposite: “I don’t see color or race—I see people.”
Too bad that so many white folk believe that pretending not to see race is the way to address racism, and that when they get caught seeing race for their advantage—as in using the natural hairstyles of black folk—they claim not to see race to their advantage. Jacobs overlooks the point that black folk wearing their hair in locks at work is often seen as inappropriate; dreadlocks are widely viewed as incompatible with our nation’s business culture. Black folk can’t choose to wear their hair in locks and get work, an option that only white folk appear capable of choosing. Basically Marc Jacobs wants us to shut up and not notice that he’s ripping off black culture. He is inspired by us and pays homage to us—in a supposedly nonracial fashion—while he refuses to see color. You see how this can so quickly go south? How about just giving credit where credit is due?
The irony is that well-meaning white folk like Marc Jacobs draw their inspiration from a misreading of the civil rights movement and the example of Martin Luther King, Jr. The civil rights movement that inspired King, that he inspired in turn, has been appropriated too, and often in troubling ways. We end up with a greatly compromised view of the black freedom struggle. In the narrative of American history, especially the kind told in our nation’s textbooks, the movement didn’t seek racial justice as much as it sought a race-neutral society. American history hugs colorblindness. If you can’t see race you certainly can’t see racial responsibility. You can simply remain blind to your own advantages. When some of you say, “I don’t see color,” you are either well-intending na?fs or willful race evaders. In either case you don’t help the cause. The failure to see color only benefits white America. A world without color is a world without racial debt.
One of the greatest privileges of whiteness is not to see color, not to see race, and not to pay a price for ignoring it, except, of course, when you’re called on it. But even then, that price pales, quite literally, in comparison to the high price black folk pay for being black. We pay a price, too, for not even being able to derive recognition, and financial reward, for the styles that make the world want to be black so bad that they don’t mind looking like us, as long as they never, ever have to be us.