If you're curious, over the last two years, Miley has:
- Used the bodies of black women as props
- Fetishized the bodies of black women as her "muses"
- Explicitly appropriated and commodified black culture for her profit
And then after causing a public dialogue on why these actions are wrong, on why they're ignorant, on why they reek of white privilege and racist microaggressions, she didn't follow it up by being more aware; no, it's almost like she reached her fully evolved form of fuckery.
She stood up on a stage and:
- wore some ugly attempt at fake "locs"
- tried to token some friendship with black artists who clearly don't like her (A$AP's distain at her even mentioning his name)
- tried to silence a black woman, yet again, who was calling out her racism
- called a black person her "mammy"
- turned a black man's speech about his literal demonization into a joke about drugs
Not to mention the sheer white privilege needed to make your whole schtick a big weed joke and it be deemed "cute" while marijuana possession is still one of the most used "convictions" to incarcerate young black men. She's just so removed from the realities and culture of the people she uses as her blueprint. Nevermind her new obsession with "hippie culture" when hippieism is racist in intent and based on the fetishization of non-white cultures as "different" and "spiritual" and "other".
If anyone thinks she walked away from this, along with MTV, as looking good, how removed are you from black people and their discourse? She didn't come off as ignorant. That's giving her too much credit. She came off as the clear racist she is, who is knowingly and happily profiting off of her racism. The whole night was an exercise in whiteness needing to dominate blackness and reduce serious issues affecting black people into jokes, from Taylor's white saviorism to Miley's unapologetic racism to whatever that Rebel Wilson shit was.
Before she decided to try on and reap every possible benefit there was to appropriating and fetishizing blackness and black culture, she was a post-Disney act struggling to find her spot in mainstream music, so yes, it is a very fair and objective criticism to say she probably owes very much, if not all, of her current career to black culture.
