October 17, 2025

BLETCHLEY PARK CONTINUES TO DECODE NEW FORMS OF HIDDEN RACISM: Yes, Taylor Swift is racist—just not the kind you think she is.

Is Taylor Swift racist? Yes.

Is she actively, explicitly anti-Black? a Trump supporter? pro-eugenics? I doubt it.

But that’s actually what worries me more: that there are so many liberal white women who move through the world never making connections between their whiteness and white supremacy.

In 1963, in Letter From Birmingham Jail, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., writes:

“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace, which is the absence of tension, to a positive peace, which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’… Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”

This is not a popular quote to post on MLK Day because it doesn’t comfort white people. Indeed, someone sent me a message on Instagram to let me know that positioning the quote “I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate” in block letters over an image of Taylor Swift would result in people feeling “judged,” “attacked,” and “defensive.”

But the reason why that is, is because of how easy it is for people to position their whiteness as neutral, their liberalism as goodness.

But as Rev. Dr. King points out, the protectors of the status quo are not so much those on the far right, but those who purport to be left-of-center, but who remain moderate in their thinking and their actions.

Are flag-wielding, MAGA-shouting Trump supporters a problem? Yes. They’re horrifying. But the biggest obstacle in taking down fascism isn’t far-right extremists.

It’s “liberals.” It’s “progressives.” It’s “democrats.”

It’s folks with “BLM” in their bios who live in majority-white suburbs and send their kids to private school. It’s folks who claim to be allies to the queer and trans communities and then have gender-reveal parties when pregnant. It’s people who look at the United States’ descent into fascism and ask, “How did we get here?” It’s folks who compare their European ancestors’ immigrations to what Black and Brown immigrants are experiencing today, as if race is inconsequential.

It’s Taylor Swift – and the majority of her fans.

Taylor Swift is a white woman whose success relies on cultural narratives of the fragility and purity of white femininity, while practicing zero interrogation into her own whiteness.

And her fans run to her defense whenever that is criticized. “But she publicly endorsed Kamala Harris!” they press, not realizing that this proves the point: Moderate politics dressed up as leftism don’t stand a chance against far-right extremism, a lesson I wish the Democratic Party would learn.

In Wi$h Li$t, Swift cheekily admits that while most people dream of Balenciaga sunglasses and soccer contracts with Real Madrid, all that she – “the girl who has everything and nothing all at once” (Elizabeth Taylor) – wants is a simple life, the so-called American dream.

“I just want you / Have a couple kids / Got the whole block looking like you,” she sings about her fiancee, football star Travis Kelce.

People were quick to point out that, especially given the cultural climate, expressing a fantasy in which two Aryan-esque rich people populate a neighborhood with blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies is a little… insensitive, at best.

Obviously, Taylor Swift didn’t sit down to write a pro-white (not to mention, deeply cisheteronormative) line here; I don’t think she did, not in the slightest. However, pushing the idea of passing on one’s genes, in the context of whiteness, has history to it – history that the pop star who is often lauded for her genius (“her brain!”) has to be willfully ignorant of for this not to occur to.

What makes Taylor Swift dangerous isn’t that she writes lyrics that could serve as the background music to a pro-eugenics Sydney Sweeney ad. It’s that she lacks the self-awareness to see how those two things could be connected.

But of course, she probably does have the self-awareness to see how her music and Sydney Sweeney are related, since over a decade before the gnostics on the left were the only ones hearing the racist dog whistles in Sweeney’s jeans ads, they were the only ones who thought they could detect the white supremacist dog whistles in Swift’s music, and endlessly hounded Swift for clicks and grins.

UPDATE: Is this a great country, or what?

UPDATE (from Steve): Nose Ring Theory still holds.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll