The Kardashians, White Privilege and Performing Blackness
The Keeping Up with the Kardashians franchise began in October 2007 with millions of views on its first episode. The reality show focuses on the personal and professional lives of the Kardashian-Jenner family.
The Kardashian-Jenner sisters are allowed to, praised for and profit off of performing Black womanhood through their bodies, sexuality and their relationships with Black men. In doing this, they get to experience everything but the burden of being Black women (Tate 2003).
The Kardashians’ performance and appropriation of Black material culture is not without a context or coincidental. It belongs to a much larger history. Blackness was introduced to the United States through the stealing and enslavement of African peoples through the transatlantic slave trade. The purpose of this process of enslavement is intimately linked to capitalism. This is important to mention in order to understand that Black people in this country originated to serve and generate resources and thereby wealth for white people. This long history is what has created the precedent for the commodification of Black culture today.
I specifically describe the Kardashian’s use of Blackness as a performance because to perform means to meticulously stage, prepare and present for the purpose of entertainment. Although their show is a reality TV show, I argue that reality television is a distortion of reality to entertain audiences for the purposes of profit. In this respect, the Kardashians are profitable and attractive caricatures of America’s innermost desires of wealth, beauty and family.
When the Kardashians perform Blackness they essentialize and are able to extract parts of the culture to create an empire for themselves. It is how many white people are able to embrace African American aesthetics without addressing the issues that affect the community. It is how they are able to make trendy boxer braids and having a large butt. However, one must think through the implications of braids and having a shapely behind being attractive and lauded only on non-Black women. Black women are kicked out of school, denied employment and ridiculed for these very things. In this respect, the Kardashians profit off of racial bias, and in doing so elevate hegemony.
Historically, the Black woman’s body has been objectified. Even more so, non-Black women have a history of exploiting and appropriating Black women’s bodies. A famous example of this would be examining the case of South African Sarah “Saartjie” Baartman whose body was showcased in an exhibition in Europe during the nineteenth century. This exhibition, however, “only reinforced the stereotype of African women as savages, primitive and grotesque.” (Romero 2017) Her butt, in particular, was considered freakish and was the sight of wonder to those who attended the exhibition.
However, when Kim Kardashian (and her sisters) perform Blackness through the creation and the alteration of their bodies it is to enhance their sexual appeal. For the sisters, enhancements also came with more fame and money. Romero argues that, “as Keeping Up with The Kardashians took off, the personification of white beauty encompassed more of what had been traditionally looked at in the mainstream beauty and pop culture as an essentialized black aesthetic.” Baartman did not get to profit off of her body. Baartman was entertainment and an object for the white male gaze.
The Kardashians have gentrified the Black ass. Black women’s bodies, for the family, is an aesthetic that can be put on — with the exaggerated lips and behind — and idealized for profit. The Kardashians performance of Black womanhood is not only a farce, but a mockery to Black women. It is a pantomime at best because there is a gross negligence of Black woman standpoint (Collins 1989). This goes to show that although they stand in for Black women in their show, the combination of their race, class and gender does not prepare them to understand or speak to Black issues.
As white women the Kardashian-Jenner women have a materially different relationship to sexism than Black women. Black feminist thought is crucial in critiquing Keeping Up With The Kardashians as iterations of Blackness are being evoked on the screen. If we understand Black feminist thought as challenging notions that Black women cannot speak for themselves, it would be irresponsible to allow the Kardashians to perform and represent their form of Blackness as authentic. Their performance of Blackness is rooted in a history of Black exploitation and capitalism. This commodification of Blackness is particularly dangerous because it is rooted in an imaginary of Blackness that is inaccurate, stereotypical and most often detrimental to Black people.
