Mixed Race Studies

Kanye Collaborator Vanessa Beecroft Reveals A Common Misconception About Race

Attn:
2016-08-09

Tricia Tongco

Vanessa Beecroft is best known as the artist who has collaborated with Kanye West on several of the rapper’s most noteworthy visuals, from the “Runaway” mini-movie to the Yeezy Season 3 fashion show.

But thanks to a recently published profile in New York Magazine, Beecroft is gaining notoriety in her own right. In the piece, she makes several bizarre statements, but her first quote in the piece is probably the most questionable:

“I have divided my personality,” she says. “There is Vanessa Beecroft as a European white female, and then there is Vanessa Beecroft as Kanye, an African-American male.” Later she tells me, “I even did a DNA test thinking maybe I am black? I actually wasn’t. I was kind of disappointed, and I don’t want to believe it. I want to do it again, because when I work with Africans or African-Americans, I feel that I am autobiographical. If I don’t call myself white, maybe I am not.”…

…The mainstream belief in the scientific community is that race is a social construct without biological meaning, with research demonstrating that genetic differences are not fixed along racial lines.

By that logic, there’s nothing wrong with what Vanity Fair describes as Beecroft’s “choose-your-own-race views.”

However, as a white woman from Italy, Beecroft is able to propose that choice from a place of privilege, while her black collaborator Kanye cannot. Also, no matter what racial identity she “feels” or identifies with at any given moment, she still benefits from white privilege, because she looks white and others treat her as such…

Read the entire article here.

Despite the fact that both Rachel [Dolezal] and Vanessa [Beecroft] seem to have found their “true” identities, I am still searching for where “multicultural” fits within the landscape that is race in America. When I was younger, I had moments of weakness where I allowed racist, ignorant, hurtful behavior to occur around me without repercussion. Speaking out, would mean having to explain myself, and then be questioned and teased for “not really being” who I say I am. I struggle with a permanent guilt for the way my appearance allows me to move through the world so much more easily than my family members, and I am grateful for the constant reminder. As much as I am connected to and proud of my Black and Brazilian heritage, an intense awareness of how I am perceived by everyone around me is part of who I am. It has taken 29 years to get here with far more work to be done. And when these white women proclaim themselves to be spiritually Black, it feels like they’re pouring multiple varieties of artisanal salt (available at the aforementioned, gentrified storefronts) on the wound.

Natasha Diaz, “White People, Stop Saying You’re ‘Black On The Inside’,” The Establishment, August 15, 2016. http://www.theestablishment.co/2016/08/15/white-people-stop-saying-youre-black-on-the-inside/.

White People, Stop Saying You’re ‘Black On The Inside’

The Establishment
2016-08-15

Natasha Diaz

White and Wrong

White people are consistent; I’ll give them that. They take Black culture as the blueprint for their fashion, entertainment, music, and new hip terms to enhance their Urban Dictionary posts. They colonize neighborhoods, forcing out people who have lived there for generations, stripping the area of culture, and filling it with ridiculous storefronts that specialize in multiple varieties of a single condiment that could easily be made at home. Just when you thought they couldn’t take any more, they’ll figure out a way to snatch even the intangible away. Take #BlackLivesMatter, a slogan built to anchor a human rights movement, stolen to protect Smurfs. (Presumably that’s what “Blue Lives Matter” is about, since otherwise it makes no goddamn sense.) Usually, white people want everything Black, except to actually be Black. That is, until Friday, June 12th, 2015, when Rachel Dolezal and her circus full of weave and spray tan came marching out into the public eye.

Everyone I knew emailed to tell me about Dolezal. As a woman of mixed race that inadvertently passes as white, I clearly needed to be in the know. A few idiots even reached out to say that they “finally understood now” where I was coming from in explaining my racial background. Let’s have a moment of silence for those poor unfortunate souls, now eternally “unfriended” in all senses of the term—R.I.P. But none of my friends’ and ex-friends’ responses were as offensive as Dolezal’s spurious claim to be Black…

Read the entire article here.