Race matters? O-Rod, Nazi Barbie, Nicki, Billie

Crystal Quintero, CC Liu, Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

One might assume Olivia is Latinx, but she's a blend of Asian (Filipina) and white. Taylor's a Southerner, beloved by Nazis. Nicki' Black from the Carribean. It shouldn't matter, but it sure does to the music industry.

Nicki Minaj on Billie Eilish's white privilege
and the implicit bias of a racist industry

Castas: hierarchy of the 16 "races"

It's not that we hate TayTay "Nazi Barbie" Swift, Inc. That's a little hard to avoid. It's just that Black artists do not get the push from the pop music industry to be the top stars when they have all the talent to be.

Remember Nicki Minaj complaining about that, drawing comparisons to Billie Eilish's career trajectory.

There was an article in Cosmopolitan ("It's Time for the Music Industry to Stop Excluding Black Women from Pop Music," by Starr Bowenbank, March 2021 issue) complaining about the same thing in 2022. Have things changed?

Record label execs, please get it together.

The industry promotes the heck out of the next Great White Hope (Aryan goddess, Barbie lookalike, Nazi princess). But anyone who's the slightest bit "ethnic" gets marginalized in a clear case of colorism.

(The darker a person, the more prejudice and implicit bias against that person). It's as if that European-Spanish Castas (lineages, castes, races) Chart still rules supreme everywhere Europeans went and set up colonies, from the shores of Mexican beaches to Plymouth Rock to Tel Aviv, Israel.

• Cardi B demands Black women be let into Miami club (Billboard)
• "The Mexican Castes" (Ignacio Maria Barreda)

"Are You Gone Already?" Nicki Minaj (featuring Billie Eilish)

If we get them to collaborate (or at least mash them up), maybe that will solve the discrimination?

Can I cuss, JimKim? - Sure, it's live TV. We'll bleep it. - That's cool AF