Nicki Minaj Teaches Miley Cyrus a Lesson About White Privilege – The Daily Beast

I don’t follow pop culture but found this piece and the underlying debate of interest:

In the T Magazine piece, Minaj finishes up the vital work of taking Cyrus to task: “The fact that you feel upset about me speaking on something that affects black women makes me feel like you have some big balls. You’re in videos with black men, and you’re bringing out black women on your stages, but you don’t want to know how black women feel about something that’s so important? Come on, you can’t want the good without the bad. If you want to enjoy our culture and our lifestyle, bond with us, dance with us, have fun with us, twerk with us, rap with us, then you should also want to know what affects us, what is bothering us, what we feel is unfair to us. You shouldn’t not want to know that.”

Minaj is picking up where Azealia Banks left off, when Banks tweeted, “Black Culture is cool, but black issues sure aren’t huh?” Banks was subtweeting Iggy Azalea, a white Australian rapper who has come under fire for her distinctly black, Southern sound (she’s also just straight problematic). The faces are different, but the concept is the same: How can we justify a culture where blackness is profitable on the radio, but deadly on the streets? How can we defend white artists who appropriate African-American sounds and styles, in light of all of the black musicians who have been robbed of their own five minutes of fame? If Iggy Azalea and Miley Cyrus want to steal African-American innovations, isn’t a working knowledge of structural racism and a commitment to hearing and amplifying black voices the least that they can do? Why are we cutting Nicki Minaj’s mic anyway—what are we so afraid of?