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“White Culture:” Why Be Proud of Something That Doesn’t Exist?

Savannah Worley
AfroSapiophile
Published in
5 min readJan 8, 2024
Flags from various countries hanging on lines.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

I used to love Grimes and her music. My favorite album of hers was Art Angels, which featured awesome songs like “Kill v. Maim” and “Venus Fly” (a song with which she collaborated with queen Janelle Monáe). According to my end-of-the-year wraps, she was one of my most listened-to artists on Spotify.

However, I’m now questioning my taste in music ever since Grimes revealed her white supremacist tendencies.

Many blame pseudo-genius Elon Musk for somehow “corrupting” her, but no one “turns you into” a white supremacist. You have to choose to open your mouth for them to feed you. Also, Grimes is in her 30s. Let’s not take away her agency.

I’m not going to list all of the problematic BS she has said, but I do want to focus on one tweet she recently posted. And yes. I will still call them “tweets” because Elon Musk can’t tell me what to do:

A tweet written by artist Grimes on X, formerly known as Twitter. It reads: “I’m called a Nazi because I happily am proud of white culture. But every day I think fondly of the brown king Cyrus the Great who invented the first ever empire, and the Japanese icon Murasaki Shikibu who wrote the first novel ever. What if humans just loved each other? History teaches us that we have all been, and always will be — great” The tweet was written on December 31, 2023.
A tweet by Grimes

I’ve never called Grimes a “Nazi,” but now I am. Therefore, I listened to music created by a Nazi and enjoyed it. What the hell is wrong with me?

“I happily am proud of white culture,” she tweets. She also fervently defended what she tweeted when others criticized her, meaning she put some thought into the tweet. She then weirdly called Cyrus the Great a “brown king” when Cyrus the Great existed at a time when “race” wasn’t even a concept. You heard me right — race is simply a concept not based on any sort of fact. There were groups of people identified familiarly and tribally, but no races.

If race doesn’t exist, neither does whiteness. That’s something racists cannot accept. So they brag about having “white pride” to keep their false “superior” identity and the privileges that come with it. However, the fact is that whiteness and white identity are nonsensical ideologies. In that case, what is there to be proud of?

The invention of whiteness

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AfroSapiophile
AfroSapiophile

Published in AfroSapiophile

AfroSapiophile is a hub for critical thinking and analysis pertaining to civil rights, human rights, systemic racism and sexism across politics, entertainment, and history.

Savannah Worley
Savannah Worley

Written by Savannah Worley

Essayist who writes about social justice, racism, and mental health | she/her | Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/skworley

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