Woke on Stilts: Professor Claims Being a Taylor Swift Fan is Racist

February 26, 2024

A California State University professor made her way into the news headlines due to posts on X during the Super Bowl. Melina Abdullah, who is no stranger to controversy, mused at what she felt was the inherent racism associated with being a Taylor Swift fan.

For most mega superstars like Taylor Swift, any publicity, including this minor blip of alleged negative publicity, is good for the Taylor Swift brand. The more we talk about it the bigger she will become, and why not, this is a free country (for now) and Ms. Swift has unlocked the key to stardom just as those other trailblazers had before her like Mariah Carey, Tina Turner, and Stevie Nicks.

But the comments Ms. Abdullah made on X were less about Taylor Swift or even racism and more about another self-proclaimed victimized academic elite generating publicity.

Because you’re a racist

Cal State University professor of Pan-Africa studies Melina Abdullah wrote on X on Super Bowl Sunday:

“Why do I feel like it’s slightly racist to be a Taylor Swift fan?”

When asked by a user to elaborate as to why she feels that way about Taylor Swift fans, she wrote:

“Kind of like that feeling I get when there are too many American flags.”

There is nothing like clarifying a statement with another vague statement. How many flags constitute too many?

The leap Ms. Abdullah is hoping people will make with her comment on Taylor Swift fans is that Taylor Swift being so successful and white makes her fans inherently racist, even if only a little bit. But deep down, the reason Ms. Abdullah feels this way (if she actually does) is because she chooses to view the world around her through a racist lens and not in any slight way, but in a big way.

Everything is racist

Later, when the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl in overtime against the San Francisco 49ers, Ms. Abdullah wrote:

“Why do I feel like this was some right-wing, white-supremacist conspiracy?!?!”

My guess is that she didn’t watch the game or follow football. The San Francisco 49ers, while impressive in that they were able to force the Chiefs into overtime, threw away the Super Bowl due to a poorly executed missed field goal by Jake Moody.

In another post on X, she wrote:

“Folks think they’re attacking me by asking why I think everything is racist…I’m not offended. Virtually everything is racist.”

There you have it, folks. Virtually everything is racist!

Bizarre political science

To be fair to Ms. Abdullah, she isn’t the first one in academia to claim Swifties are inherently racist. In 2021, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute held a conference in which they examined the “whiteness” of Ms. Swift’s fanbase.

The Institute’s ethnomusicologist Kate Galloway said of the conference:

“In addition to looking at how she engages with gender and age and maturity, some scholars are really engaging with the politics of whiteness and how that plays out in her fandom.”

Imagine for a moment if a well-to-do institute of higher learning put on a conference to examine the “blackness” of Beyonce’s fanbase and how the “politics of blackness” plays out in her fandom. It would rightly cause controversy because it’s ridiculous, just as the study of Taylor Swift’s white fanbase is ridiculous.

The truth is colleges and universities have filled their faculty with ideologues hell-bent on pushing their poison on the young minds that pay premium dollars to be indoctrinated instead of educated. Ms. Abdullah, who self-proclaims on her X profile that she is a “womanist” and “truth-teller,” wrote of her recent notoriety:

“Here’s the thing…When fake ass journalists from right-wing outlets turn tweets into news, they spur actual violent responses from their idiotic white-delusionist followers. #TaylorSwiftHasSomeRacistFans #DoublingDown”

The tweets are news because of her position in higher education, and here’s the thing…she wanted it to be news, which is why she wrote it. There’s a Taylor Swift song that she’d identify with, given her propensity for hate towards those who don’t look like her; she should check it out. #HatersGonnaHate.

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