Taylor Swift's White America

The pop star is a clean-cut representative of whites accepting social transformation

Taylor Swift is the biggest celebrity in America. Her 2023 concert tour was the first in history to net a billion dollars. Major media outlets hired reporters solely dedicated to covering her. Swift’s star power has encouraged millions of young women to watch the NFL after the starlet began dating Travis Kelce. She is Time’s Person of the Year for a reason. 

Swift represents more than just her own success. Her status and popularity reflects the white middle class that loves her music – for both good and ill.

Unlike other pop stars, Swift is fairly benign. Her music isn’t profane, doesn’t fixate on sex, and is light-hearted. It’s inoffensive music for the whole family. Swift doesn’t promote herself as a degenerate. She has no tattoos, isn’t known for drug abuse, and doesn’t sport odd styles. She looks like a nice white girl you’d love to bring home to mom. Compare her to white pop stars like Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish, and Swift is practically wholesome. In contrast to other female celebrities, she doesn’t date rappers. She only dates white guys.

Swift’s “basic” whiteness makes many left-wing critics hate her. They would rather have a star with tattoos and a rapper on her arm. Over the years, Swift has done more to accommodate the haters, particularly by adopting vocally liberal politics. Her music has changed as well. She started out as a country singer, but has moved on to a more “cosmopolitan” blend. There’s hardly any country in her newer music. It’s standard pop now, with hip-hop influenced beats and such. The difference between her and other artists is that there’s hardly any rapping. Her singing is largely the same. Like everything Taylor, it’s unobjectionable and can be played at all occasions. It’s the musical equivalent to a suburban cul-de-sac or a wine bar chain. 

Those aren’t terrible places to find yourself at, but they don’t inspire the greatest music. I’m personally not a fan of Swift’s music. It’s bland to my ears, even by pop standards. However, T Swift’s music is fine when compared to the alternatives. A girl being really into Swift is much better than her being really into rap. 

Even if you don’t like her music, Taylor Swift is still a nice white girl with nice white aesthetics. That’s why Swift is still greeted with suspicion and antipathy by minority critics. They’re pretty open that they can’t stand the pop star’s whiteness. Here are some examples:

Black NPR host:

I want to go back to Taylor's positioning as a white woman. Because she puts herself in her work, her privilege, her experiences and her biases show in her approach. Especially in music videos. Like the way she would make brunettes the villains, in the "White Horse" video, or "You Belong with Me." In the "Wildest Dreams" video, she finally makes the brunette the hero. But then she's romanticizing colonial-era Africa.

Black student newspaper columnist:

Taylor Swift is a white feminist who exists in a bubble where race, class, and everything else that’s different from the white, straight, privileged status quo is swept under the rug. She favors a narrative where the only thing that matters is cardigans and “champagne problems.” Fortunately, this is the reality of many of Swift’s fans: young white women.

Asian Salon writer:

Rather than commenting on the controversies of her alleged new beau or denouncing his remarks, Swift decided to team up with rapper Ice Spice in a move that many felt was obvious damage control. And considering the timing, as well as how Swift's girl squad is predominately white, it felt an awful lot like the ole "I'm not racist; I have a Black friend" defense, as if that shields you from prejudice. (Though Swift has said it was the rapper's team who reached out first.) The star's silence is loud. To be "neutral" is to still be complicit in racism. Whether she's dating Healy or this is all an elaborate PR scheme, Swift has proven herself to be another white woman who claims to be an ally, claims Black Lives Matter and calls herself a feminist — but only as long as it serves her.

Obviously, a lot of this resentment at a pretty white woman masquerading as bold social commentary. Regardless of the motivation, it still illustrates the rabid anti-white hate of the media.

Swift is not at all a confrontational figure. She makes a concerted effort to show how much she appreciates black music and culture, going so far as to do collaborations with rappers. She’s also very vocally liberal. She urged her fans to vote for Joe Biden in 2020 and publicly condemned the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. She may tell her fans to vote for Biden next year. 

This is a far cry from her days when she was a popular alt-right meme and journalists speculated that she was secretly a conservative. She never delved into politics prior to 2018. Swift was pilloried in the press for her failure to champion Hillary Clinton and denounce Trump in 2016. She corrected that error in subsequent elections.

Her change reflects that of college-educated whites in general. (Swift herself never went to college because she was already a star in her teens). Since 2016, they’re moved further to the Left. This is one of the main causes of the GOP’s disappointing results in recent elections. This demographic is growing to share Swift’s beliefs and values.

At the same time, Swift and middle-class whites are maintaining many bourgeois standards. They’re not dressing like wiggers, they’re not getting face tats, and they’re not speaking in Ebonics. For the most part, they’re still clean-cut and respectable. They’re working white-collar jobs and still desire the American Dream. T Swift’s fans are not the dregs of modern America.

But they’re not too bothered by the dregs, either. Much of the white middle class is fine with Black Lives Matter, Pride Month, and Biden in the White House. They just don’t want it to go too far and upset their way of life. As long as they can go to the T Swift concert in peace, they’re okay with the prevailing order.

And the status quo allows them to do that. 

Swift’s issues merely reflect those of her primary audience. Her target demographic moved left after 2016, and so did she. She’s a childless, unmarried girlboss at 34. So are many of her fans. Both her fans and she proclaim to be feminists. Her music is as basic as her biggest fangirls.

Taylor Swift represents a nice, white America that comes to terms with not-so-nice America. It’s surrendered to the current paradigm and even votes for it. But it avoids the obvious signs of decay. It still wears cardigans and upholds monogamy. It just doesn’t challenge demographic change, anti-white racism, or cultural mongrelization. It only wants those trends temporarily set aside for the Taylor concert. As long as they can experience a slice of the old Americana, everything is alright.

Swift is not the worst villain in America. Not by a long shot. It’s good that someone so white is the most popular star in America. But don’t expect the Swifties to revolt against the system. They’re not bothered by it.