Global pop-star phenomenon Britney Spears recently published her memoir, The Woman in Me, in October of this year. The tell-all has received much attention as she gives personal accounts and details about living in the limelight. Among the reactions to the book, one chapter particularly stood out to audiences when a narration of the passage went viral.
The Woman in Me by Britney Spears (2023)
In chapter 10 of The Woman in Me, Spears addresses her previous romantic relationship with Justin Timberlake, a former member of NSYNC and a celebrated artist in his own right. This clip itself is hard and cringe-worthy to listen to as Spears recounts how Timberlake casually adopted a "blaccent" when around black people. Take a quick listen to the ridiculousness of it all.
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Spears highlights a real and constant issue among celebrities regarding black culture.
If you pay any attention to pop culture, you will know that this is not the first time something like this has happened. Historically, celebrities have constantly commandeered black culture for aesthetic and shallow purposes that benefit their careers, all the while ignoring how such a practice is harmful and puts society at a stalemate of creating a post-racist America.
James Baldwin confronts this in his essay “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” (1979), in which he criticizes how the gentrification of black English and the need to purify it is to deny black people of their history and identity. Baldwin explains how language is a revealer in the speaker’s experience. Language reflects history and conveys more information to the listener than we all may realize.
“It is the most vivid and crucial key to identify: It reveals that private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public, or communal identity.”
When specifically talking about black English, Baldwin reiterates how the language was created through duress and made as a means of survival. When enslaved Africans were brought over, they were not only coming to a foreign land with a foreign tongue but they were also grouped with Africans from different tribes who didn’t speak the same languages.
“Black English is the creation of the black diaspora: A language comes into existence by means of brutal necessity, and the rules of the language are dictated by what the language must convey.”
Therefore, we must acknowledge that this language arose from these dire circumstances and is evidence of the black experience in the United States. To ignore it is to remove the necessary weight to mold it for another group of people who will never fully understand why black English is integral and vital to identity. Although it may not be obvious sometimes, we feel this disconnect nonetheless. As Spears writes in her memoir, "Sometimes I thought they tried too hard to fit in." It's uncomfortable to watch someone steal another's culture because it's not their identity, so how they choose to use something, like black English, comes off as unnatural and wrong because it wasn't made for them, nor do they understand it.
Tweet criticizing Timberlake's response to Jesse William's BET speech (2016)
Artists like Justin Timberlake view black culture like a t-shirt: something they can take on and off again when they feel it best suits them. They like to cherry-pick what seems trendy or cool, and when it no longer serves their brand, they revert to what’s comfortable for them. But this is never the case with actual black people. They do not have the privilege to pick and choose, and even worse, they are criticized for embracing their identity and further marginalized, being labeled as low-class, ghetto, ratchet, etc. The act itself of white people attacking black culture but then taking it for themselves to use is a gross abuse of power and prejudice. Black English is rooted in the fact that white people forced black people to create a language, so for white people to then take that away and use the language for themselves is a flex in power and evidence of how deeply institutionalized racism runs in this country.
Even still, when public figures, or anyone, are called out for appropriating cultures, apologies are most often half-assed and quickly forgiven and forgotten. In Timberlake’s case, he has had a long history of cultural appropriation and for being held accountable for his actions. A simple Google search will quickly show you that. Yet, he continued to build his career and brand by profiting from black culture, showing no signs of real learning from his mistakes. This has and will continue to happen time and time again, creating a vicious cycle that reminds us that we have never had and may never have a genuinely post-racist America.
This is the bitter truth. As Baldwin articulates at the end of his essay:
“And, after all, finally in a country with standards so untrustworthy, a country that makes heroes of so many criminal mediocrities, a country unable to face why so many of the nonwhite are in prison, or on the needle, or standing, futureless, in the streets-- it may very well be that both the child, and his elder, have concluded that they have nothing whatever to learn from the people of a country that has managed to learn so little.”
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