Miley Cyrus Stopped Wearing Blackness as a Costume Because “Sexism” or Something
Or “Why White People Need to Stop Talking About Black Culture”
In a story with Billboard Miley Cyrus spoke about where she’s at now in her life. If you recall, a few years ago she was parading around as a living breathing parody of all things Black. She had moldy disgusting dreadlocks at the VMAs and damn near took credit for creating twerking. With a schedule like this, you’d be amazed that she also fit in time for antagonizing Black women like Nicki Minaj. In this new Billboard feature she reflects on how she used to act and how she’s now a changed person. She doesn’t take responsibility for all the anti-black and generally racist things that she’s done over the past few years, but she does take a second to call hip-hop sexist.
Now, let’s be real: hip-hop, in general, is sexist. I’m not even going to entertain the idea that hip-hop hasn’t always been plagued by themes of misogyny and toxic masculinity. Black women have been speaking out about the misogyny, and specifically misogynoir, in Black culture for a very long time. So let me not waste my time and try to speak about misogyny when a Black woman can be paid to write something way better than I ever could.
What I will say, however, is that Miley Cyrus is definitely not the person who should be talking about sexism in hip-hop. As a white woman, who shows very little understanding of Black history and the nuances of Black culture, she won’t even begin to understand how to solve the problem of misogyny in the Black community. Because of her distance from the hip-hop community, and, even more, the Black community, her comments on sexism in the genre do absolutely nothing except stereotype.
“That’s what pushed me out of the hip-hop scene a little. It was too much ‘Lamborghini, got my Rolex, got a girl on my cock’” — Miley Cyrus
This being Miley’s reason for leaving hip-hop behind makes complete sense to me. She’s someone who simplified Blackness into a phase so her simplification and vilification of hip-hop is completely on brand for her. It doesn’t matter that there are, and have been, female MC’s working for equality within the genre. All that matters to her is the quick dismissal of her “less respectable” past by throwing hip-hop under the bus.
This is a problem, generalizing a genre, on it’s own. But hip-hop has been politicized and is seen as synonymous with African-American people. When Miley Cyrus spoke about the sexism in hip-hop she definitely wasn’t imagining Mac Miller, G-Eazy, or Eminem; even though the latter is one of the most sexist people in hip-hop. No, she probably didn’t even imagine a specific rapper, she just had a caricature of Blackness in her mind and so did most people who read her quote. There’s layers to speaking about hip-hop and Blackness, and Miley has absolutely no understanding of those layers.
It is interesting, though, that after years of imitating and mocking Blackness, specifically the aesthetics of Black women, Miley Cyrus has now turned around to say that hip-hop is sexist. In the interview, she went out of her way to speak on hip-hop and call it sexist. There wasn’t even a question about the genre, she just brought it up. Yet, throughout her time actually participating and existing within hip-hop culture she stayed relatively silent on how sexist it was. In many ways Miley used that time to uplift her own image and take ownership of her body. However she also used that time to objectify Black people, especially Black women, and turn us into props. It seems like she was okay with the objectification nature of the genre until it no longer suited her. So once she was done getting everything she could out of Black people and our culture, she had no problem with calling an entire genre sexist, despite how diverse it is.
I’m not going to lie: I’m very defensive of hip-hop and Black culture. Hearing it be called sexist, homophobic, etc. makes me tense up a little because I know that not all of it is like that. But I’m not ignorant; I know that a large portion of the genre has sexist undertones and sometimes that tones are the basis of an entire song or album. After that initial tensing up I’m open to and welcome the conversations about hip-hop and Black culture in an attempt to productively discuss the systems of oppression that we perpetuate. So, if someone came with a nuanced point about hip-hop and its role in sexism then I’d be all ears. As we all know, Miley Cyrus is not the person who is going to bring that discussion. She’s racist. I don’t know to what extent, but she’s proven herself to be at least implicitly racist just like most white people. Without checking her own role in the oppression of others, it’s impossible to take her seriously when she starts criticizing the people she was just trying to be like.
This problem exists far beyond Miley Cyrus and her specific history with Blackness. It’s extremely common for non-Black people to comment on and police Black culture, usually shown with little understanding or nuance. I’m sure the people who do it specifically to be racist are in the minority, but there’s almost always a racist effect. As I said before: hip-hop is seen as synonymous with Blackness. When someone speaks about hip-hop they are often implicitly speaking about Black people, specifically African Americans. If a “criticism” about hip-hop or Black culture isn’t productive or nuanced, then it’s going to end up having a somewhat racist effect. Please trust us when we say that we have been having these discussions. We have a full plate fighting our own oppression and dismantling the oppression within our communities so we deserve a break from dealing with outsiders telling us about ourselves.
