“But we can also drag Swift for being a respectable white woman that often performs purity (more whiteness) and constantly plays the victim card, using her white femme womanhood to navigate conflict in ways that avoid accountability or culpability. Especially when this conflict is her pinning the bla…”— Ashleigh Shackelford, wearyourvoicemag.com
“Because Swift operates on white feminism and white fragility as survival. Her albums, her platform, and her life is based upon being a victim, being the one to be saved and being a white princess. Collaborating with one of the most controversial rappers over lyrics that seemingly destroy the narrati…”— Ashleigh Shackelford, wearyourvoicemag.com
“Try as people might to divorce celebrity from the real world, it directly influences the world that we all live in. Portrayals of black men in the media lead to racist narratives that paint Kanye as a villain and Taylor as the white woman in distress. Putting on a show at the Grammys to become a vic…”— Ira Madison III, medium.com
“Despite insistence from Taylor that she would ‘very much like to be excluded from this narrative, one that [she] has never asked to be a part of, since 2009,’ she followed the VMAs incident up by releasing the song ‘Innocent’ that directly referenced the drama with Kanye. In a quite condescending so…”— Ira Madison III, medium.com
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”— Desmond Tutu, tutufoundation-usa.org
“When a white female artist pens countless songs bashing her ex-flames & former friends without their stamp of approval, it's considered "musical genius" and "art" but when a black male artist does so, it's considered "character assassination." Another racist double sandard in our country which must…”— Daniel Preda, rxse-gxld.tumblr.com
“The song, titled ‘Innocent,’ sees Swift playing judge and jury, offering her verdict that West is finally off the hook. Again, the black man on trial for a crime he was falsely accused of is a familiar occurrence in U.S. history.”— Kevin Allred, kevin-allred.com
“We do not live in a post-race (or post-racist) society like many would like to believe. A black man stood up and spoke back to the white establishment for an enormous slight of the music and accomplishments of a black woman; that same black woman then ended up having to apologize for and distance he…”— Kevin Allred, kevin-allred.com
“When all this takes place, more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid. We can’t simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism. To have your experience denied l…”— Barack Obama, time.com
“Unless the United States builds a wall, Mexicans will swarm across the border, enroll in law school en masse, and eventually become biased judges”— Donald Trump, newyorker.com
“The reason America is such a horror story is that the entire thing is built on an Old Indian Graveyard.”— Frankie Boyle, stopwar.org.uk
“I’m the least, just so you know, I am the least racist person, the least racist person that you’ve ever seen, the least.”— Donald Trump, telegraph.co.uk
“This is urgent. Continued failure to deal with our country’s race-based historical traumas dooms us to perpetually re-enact them.”— Fania Davis, yesmagazine.org
“How much time will I spend finding the correct words to say that the color of a person’s skin is not justification for ending their life? And how much time will elapse until those words mean anything to the people who actually kill us?”— Kara Brown, jezebel.com
“Being a black parent, especially of a black boy, comes with the added onus of having to protect your child from a country that is out to get him—a country that kills someone that looks like him every 28 hours, a country that will likely imprison him by his mid-thirties if he doesn't get his high sch…”— Jazmine Hughes, gawker.com
“To be black in America is to exist in haunting, mundane proximity to death at all moments.”— Hannah Giorgis, buzzfeed.com
“I don’t know where we go from here because those of us who recognize the injustice are not the problem. Law enforcement, militarized and indifferent to black lives, is the problem.”— Roxane Gay, nytimes.com
“Who the hell wants to have a police officer put their hand on them or yell and scream at them? It’s an awful experience. Every black man I know has had this experience. Every one of them. It is hard to believe that the world is your oyster if the police can rough you up without punishment. And when…”— Roland G. Fryer Jr., nytimes.com
“People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy.”— James Baldwin, amazon.com
“Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise”— Maya Angelou, poets.org