Like many others, I am pissed off about Macklemore winning ALL the rap Grammy’s. Nothing embodies the fact that we live in a neoliberal society that believes that post-racialism is real and that homophobia is the last bastion of oppression quite like a straight white rapper winning all the rap awards at the Grammy’s, many of which were for a song he wrote about gay people that perpetuates the racist myth of black homophobia. And while there is nothing new about straight men being rewarded for appropriating and profiting off homophobic oppression, there is something befuddling to me about folks holding up ‘Same Love’ as some kind of liberatory anthem for queers. I don’t want feel-good, watered-down raps promoting the passive acceptance of gay people. I don’t want songs that try to convince straight people that my love is ‘the same’ as theirs so they’ll throw me some crumbs from their table that I don’t want to sit at. I want songs about radical, aggressive self-love in the face of oppression. I want songs about owning my sexuality, my power, and my love, all while telling haters to go fuck themselves, or better yet, to BOW DOWN. This is why Beyonce’s ‘***Flawless’ is my queer anthem.
I woke up like this
‘***Flawless’ is a galvanizing feminist manifesta. In ‘***Flawless’, Beyonce exhorts women to take up space in the world, hails the power of female ambition, and implores women to own our sexuality. Macklemore’s ‘Same Love’ is a sanctimonious rap about how queers are ‘the same’ as straight people. Macklemore raps about homophobic oppression, an oppression he has never experienced. He caricatures hip hop as homophobic, when there are queer hip hop artists making better music that speaks to their own oppression. Macklemore’s lyrics imply that ‘gay is the new black!’ by conflating civil rights and gay rights throughout the song. Its racist and appropriative, not empathetic. Not to mention the benevolent homophobia inherent in the assertion that queer people only deserve rights because we’re ‘just like’ straight people, rather than by virtue of our humanity.
I don’t need straight boys to validate my existence. I woke up like this…FLAWLESS.
I admit, I teared up the first time i saw the videos for ‘Same Love’ and ‘***Flawless.’ But while ‘***Flawless’ just kept getting better with each listen, ‘Same Love‘ pissed me off when I listened with critical ears. Take a look at some of these lyrics:
“If I was gay, I would think hip hop hates me.” Macklemore denounces hip hop as categorically homophobic. This line not only flagrantly effaces queer hip hop artists, but also targets a musical genre created by and for people of color for critique rather than the entire culture of homophobia. Hip hop is no more homophobic than pop, country, rock, or any other musical genre, and to pretend that’s the case allows the onus of homophobia to fall on people of color, reinforces the racist myth that people of color are more homophobic than white people (a myth sustained by gay racism, ie. “POC are to blame for upholding prop 8!” rather than the white Christians who spent millions defending hetero marriage), and absolves white people of their homophobia.
“It’s the same fight that led people to walk outs and sit ins.” Macklemore conflates the civil rights and mainstream LGBT rights movement, which ignores queer people of color at the intersections of both identities, harms both movements by insinuating that black and gay are separate categories for comparison rather than people whose liberations are interdependent, and overlooks the unique historical struggles of people of color. He goes on to rap, “It’s human rights for everybody, there is no difference.” There are differences between racial and sexual oppression, conflating the two is ignorant and historically specious at best, white supremacist at worst.
Macklemore: ugh
“I might not be the same, but that’s not important.” NO. You are a straight man. Acknowledging straight privilege is INCREDIBLY important. If you want to be a straight ally, probably the first step is to NOT deny your enormous power and privilege over queer people!
“A certificate on paper isn’t gonna solve it all, but its a damn good place to start.” I don’t have the space here to go into all the queer critiques of gay marriage that explain why marriage is a terrible place to start and an egregious focus for a movement, but you can find all those critiques, that people smarter than me have written about ad nauseum, archived, here. When trans* women of color are dying on the streets daily, and queer people are disproportionately subjected to incarceration, homeless, rape, and murder, why the hell would we start with gay marriage? How is gay marriage going to help with the most pressing issues facing our community? Gay marriage is often cited as an example of trickle-down social justice, ie. social justice that starts with the privileged and ignores the issues facing the most vulnerable, marginalized people in a community.
Mary Lambert in all her amazing glory
The only redeemable part of ‘Same Love’ for me, is Mary Lambert. That hook is beautiful. Mary Lambert is not insisting that her love is analogous to straight peoples’, or that her struggle as a white queer is analogous to a people of color’s, or that gay marriage is the solution to her oppression, she is simply and authentically singing from her heart about HER love.
When I started critiquing Macklemore on the GF’s Facebook, and posting articles likethis, this , this, and this, a lot of folks (tellingly, these were mostly straight white people) responded defensively. I get it. I really do. We live in a culture that praises ‘allies’, especially white men for acting with baseline human decency. You think you deserve medals/cookies/pats on the back for not hating gays. You think that I should be grateful to you because you tolerate my existence. You like to “feel all fuzzy and warm because there’s someone like you [Macklemore] spreading watered-down positivity rather than some Other suggesting that your passive acceptance isn’t really doing much to change a damn thing.” All I’m asking you to do is to listen. I compiled your most common defenses of Macklemore with my responses:
Macklemore is an ally! Acting like some kind of white savior pioneer who brought the issue of homophobia to hip hop is NOT allyship. Allyship would be checking and discussing your straight privilege, promoting queer hip hop artists, and acknowledging that homophobia and racism are the reasons for your mass appeal. Indeed, the success of same love is due to the white supremacist heteronormative patriarchy that will laud a straight white man for writing an anti-homophobic song, while ignoring, silencing, or further marginalizing queer people, people of color, and queer people of color who write anti-homophobia songs. It’s incredibly frustrating to suddenly see people care about homophobia, something queer people have been talking about FOREVER just because a straight man rapped about it.
Please stop.
But I have a queer/queer person of color friend who loves ‘Same Love!’ Knowing a queer/QPOC person who loves ‘Same Love’ does not render these critiques invalid, in the same way that having a black friend doesn’t mean that you’re not racist. People have conflicting views because marginalized groups are not homogenous, monolithic entities. That doesn’t mean you can ignore or talk over the queer people, people of color, and queer people of color who are critiquing Macklemore; it means you shut up and listen to become a stronger ally. To say that a critique launched by the very people Macklemore is rapping about or denouncing as categorically homophobic is unimportant is quite frankly racist and homophobic.
But Macklemore had good intentions! 1. How the hell could you possibly know this? Are you and Macklemore BFFs? Did he call and tell you that he’s really well-intended when he raps about gay people? 2. Intentions are not impact. Maybe he didn’t intend to be racist or win a bunch of Grammy’s, but that’s what happened.
I expect much resistance to this essay from Macklemore’s defenders, but I have Beyonce in my ears right now reminding me to ‘speak my mind’ and ‘love my haters.’
I don’t need straight boys rhapsodizing about how my love is falsely equivalent to heterosexual love.
I need them to BOW DOWN.
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