The Weird, Uncomfortable Racial Politics of TikTok

I am forty-six years old, so TikTok falls under the sprawling category of “Not for me.” I’ve never made a TikTok video. Even writing the word TikTok makes me feel silly and I am a proud Juggalo.

Yet I end up watching a fair number of TikTok videos, or TikTok-style videos all the same because they’re part of the white noise of everyday life online and I spend WAY too much time on the internet.

I’m on Facebook more than is healthy or right so I end up passively consuming a lot of Reels, its answer to TikTok. I also encounter a fair number of TikTok videos on Reddit.

One thing that I have noticed about these videos is that a lot of them feature white people dancing to black music, particularly hip hop or R&B, or lip-syncing to black music, with a smug expression that implicitly says,, “Isn’t it crazy that I, a middle aged white person, and ‘rocking out’ to the rap music the young people enjoy?”

Hip Hop has been a major cultural force for well over four decades. It’s been forty-three years since The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” became the first rap song to crack the top 40.

Yet a disconcertingly sizable percentage of the American people continue to see it as a novelty and a fad. That’s what’s so frustrating about these videos. Everything is on a goofy surface level. There’s no real engagement with black music or black culture.

At this point there shouldn’t be anything particularly strange or unusual or comically incongruous about white people dancing or lip-syncing to black music. Hip Hop has been a massive mainstream cultural force since the early 1980s.

Eminem is the best-selling rapper of all time. Yet I nevertheless find myself transfixed by videos where middle-aged housewives make soup or parent their children while listening to a Yin-Yang Twins jam.

These videos are simultaneously self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing. They’re self-deprecating in that the ostensible humor comes from the incongruity of dorky white people dancing or lip-syncing to cool black music. But there’s also an unmistakable element of self-aggrandizement to it as well because on some level these corny-ass white people want credit for being hip enough to still love popular music from their youth.

When it comes to white people being embarrassing on social media, Madonna is pretty much the Big Boss. She is at once an incredibly important, groundbreaking, revolutionary badass icon and a cringe-worthy embarrassment.

So it is not surprising that in the race to see what white person of a certain age can embarrass themselves the most through lip-syncing black music on social media, Madonna emerged the winner. And also the loser.

Madonna engaged in some of her signature tone-deaf bumbling when she posted on Instagram of the 30th anniversary of her Sex book, “30 years ago I published a book called S.E.X. In addition to photos of me naked there were photos of Men kissing Men, Woman kissing Woman and Me kissing everyone. Now Cardi B can sing about her WAP. Kim Kardashian can grace the cover of any magazine with her naked ass and Miley Cyrus can come in like a wrecking ball. You’re welcome b-tches.”

This message was accompanied by a clown emoji.

Cardi B tweeted, in irritation, that she “literally [paid] this woman homage so many times cause I grew up listening to her," before arguing that Madonna could "make her point without putting clown emojis and getting slick out the mouth.”

The two made up and Madonna, being Madonna, decided to make a video of herself lip-syncing and dancing to B’s verse on Glorilla’s “Tomorrow 2.”

Madonna can do whatever the hell she wants at this point. She’s a legend. But watching her co-opt the swag and raw sexuality of a young black woman to make some kind of point that is lost on me and the rest of the world epitomizes what makes these videos so uncomfortable and problematic.

I am a corny ass middle aged white person who loves black music. But I don’t make videos acting like that’s somehow novel or hilarious or unexpected or subversive because it’s not.

There’s nothing particularly unusual about white folks enjoying black music so don’t treat it like it’s something new or wild or different and don’t give yourself a pat on the back and a cookie just because you’re a white guy who sells insurance yet still knows most of the words to a Snoop Dogg song.

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