This past week in the U.S. has been particularly daunting, as the nation grapples with decades of racist violence by the police in the midst of a global pandemic that disproportionately affects Black Americans. Around the country, people have put their anger about the deaths of George Floyd, Sean Reed, Breonna Taylor, and more to work, taking to the streets and donating to bail funds and organizations that support Black communities. It’s been a week of questioning power, platform, and performance.
In this landscape, that questioning has turned not just to our governments and political leaders and the law enforcement ecosystem, but to our celebrities.
The past few months of the coronavirus pandemic have shown us that while celebrities are human, they’re not exactly like us. Access to medical care, resources to stay safely above the fray, big social platforms to push down any kind of criticism — these are the perks of celebrity. Add to that the adoration of fans and the outcries of trolls, and it’s a perfect storm where celebrities can craft a castle around them built on relentless positive reinforcement. Those who raise actual issues become part of a faceless troll army, and celebrities can comfort themselves with people, in real life and in their curated social feeds, who never tell them when they’re wrong.
But this week we’ve seen several examples of the good that comes when celebrities are held accountable and take these concerns seriously. As famous people overtook Twitter and Instagram with Black Lives Matter support and donation links, they interacted with a system that would both laud their efforts and encourage them to do more. Mistakes were made, commitments to do better were issued, and we began to see some of the productive fruit of holding our faves to high standards.
Nowhere was this more apparent than with Taylor Swift, who kicked off the weekend by calling out President Trump for inciting violence in a recent tweet. “After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November,” she tweeted in response. It quickly became her most-liked tweet ever, with more than two million likes.
But four years ago, Taylor was a different kind of celebrity. She didn’t advocate for a specific presidential candidate, and she trended toward private choices instead of public activism. After neo-Nazis used her work and image as a symbol, her team threatened to sue a leftist blog that drew attention to the issue, sending a letter that read in part, “Ms. Swift has no obligation to campaign for any particular political candidate or broadcast her political views, and the fact that her political views are not public enough for your taste does not give you the authority to presume what her political opinions may be or that her political views correlate to the support of white supremacy.”
Now, she’s taken an overt political stance. She saw the publicized criticisms, and she slowly adapted. Her Netflix documentary Miss Americana illustrated this transformation, as Taylor reflected on her own power and privilege. She’s better for it — and from a fan perspective, her music is vastly more enjoyable when you can watch her make concrete shifts toward activism and use her platform to be anti-racist.
Taylor wasn’t the only celebrity to use her social media platforms to weigh in on the protests and activism taking place all over the U.S., and globally. Harry Styles has long been criticized by his Black fans for being lukewarm in his politics. At the start of his solo career, members of Harry’s Black fanbase, like Victoria, age 21, were brainstorming ways to raise awareness of the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the fact that Black people exist in his fandom. During an early concert tour, one of his Black fans printed out Black Lives Matter paper cards and distributed them at concerts, in the hopes that he might acknowledge the movement. “A lot of people, either A. didn’t hold them up, or B. they did, and Harry ignored them,” Victoria, whose last name is not included to protect their identity, tells Teen Vogue. “It blew up on stan Twitter, obviously. We were waiting for him to do something about it. … He would hold up the Pride flag, the Bi flag, the Trans flag, the Pan flag, so why couldn’t he hold up the Black Lives Matter flag?”
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June 02, 2020 at 01:51AM
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White Celebrities Are Now Speaking Out About Black Lives Matter, Thanks to Fan Pressure - Teen Vogue
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