David Bowie understood the importance of representation in the media

Following David Bowie’s death on Sunday MTV posted a video from 1983 in which Bowie criticized the station for playing few videos by Black artists. When the interviewer asks what Black artists “would mean to a 17 year old” Bowie quickly notes the implication that he means a White 17 year old and states that he knows what it “would mean to a Black 17 year old” to see him/herself reflected on TV. Also interesting is the interviewer’s frankness about the fact that MTV would play Black artists only if they were popular (and profitable) among Whites.

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“Kanye West is a nigger.”

The title of this post is one of the more gentle quotes compiled from Twitter on this site following Kanye West’s interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards Sunday night.  For those unfamiliar with the situation (though I recently saw this story on CNN, so if you’re reading this you’re probably familiar), Taylor Swift won the award for Best Female Video and Kanye West took the stage to say that Beyonce’s video for “Single Ladies” was one of the best of all time.  Apologies followed, but the story continues to be told.

Entertainment Weekly, of all places, does a good job of examining the racial implications of this situation:

Then there’s the other context underlying this story: namely, race. I want to make it 100 percent clear that I am absolutely not accusing everyone who’s criticized Kanye’s VMAs conduct of having racist motivations. That would be ridiculous, not to mention hypocritical. But racism is a undeniable part of this controversy. Not just from the Twitterers and blog commenters whose first instinct has been to spew truly vile racial slurs in Kanye’s direction. (Blogger Harry Allen has compiled some of the most disgusting examples; warning, lots of NSFW language.) I’m talking, too, about all the characterizations of Taylor Swift as a victim of some awful crime. When a black man speaks rudely in the presence of a younger white woman — and that’s all Kanye really did — and it gets described as an “attack” or a “violation” or an “assault,” you bet that’s playing into centuries of racist tropes. When a black man does something impolite, making no reference whatsoever to race, and he immediately gets crucified for “hating white people” or “reverse racism,” that itself is a form of racism. Here’s a question for those who use this line: VMAs host Russell Brand made some pretty gross jokes about Katy Perry and Lady Gaga during the broadcast. Does he hate white people, too?

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