Thank you so much for writing this! Up until this I’ve just been in this confused place, recognizing her genius but feeling perplexed at the weird shit that goes along with that, not unlike this gif:
I’ve always taken issue with people calling her homophobic because she is openly bisexual, and even has some references to both men and women in her lyrics. I don’t know where a bisexual woman using anti-gay (anti-feminine/anti-female) slurs really fits on the oppression chart, so it’s just something I always have to point out and nobody really has an answer to it.
But, fuck it. Azealia Banks is good for the world and the world is a better place as a result of her music and her intellect. The other weird shit that comes with it be damned! You are so right that she’s under higher scrutiny as a Black woman. No doubt she’s more than aware of this. Maybe that’s the genius of it all; it wasn’t until she actually started paraphrasing what Trump has been saying that we realize we have a problem with it, and then we assign blame to the Black woman…last I checked we’re still in America so that sounds about right. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s sitting back right now basking in her frustration with White Supremacy waiting for somebody, anybody, to point out what’s been so obvious to her all along.
I can almost start to understand her support for Donald Trump. I heard something from a Black Buddhist woman in regard to Trump and the racism and bigotry we’re seeing as a result of him — she says at least we can see it now. “You can’t change what you can’t see.” There’s almost a case to be made for forcing up everyone’s deeply-entrenched racism by electing Donald Trump, and then attacking it directly. (The amount of times I’ve alluded to arguments in favor of electing Donald Trump since joining Medium…) Am I over-analyzing her? Sure. Do I need to understand the inner workings of Banks’s brain in order to respect that she is nuanced? No. She doesn’t owe me shit. But I’m a psychologist, it’s sort of what I do. (I would forgo a $27 donation to Bernie if I could pick her brain.) Am I going to vote for Trump? God, no.
This is also a great piece about Azealia Banks:
