Thursday, October 18, 2012

Post Glacial



So there's been a lot of discussion this week about writer Michelle Lapidos and her blog Before and Afro. To sum it up Lapidos is a white, Jewish woman living in New York City. She has worked as an intern for Vogue and as a writer/correspondent for Spa Week (whatever that is). At first glance she seems to be a typical young woman living in NYC, definitely kookier than your average urbanite, but there is certainly nothing incendiary about her or her work. Recently, however, Lapidos went to a Studio 54 themed party. As part of her costume she bought a huge afro wig. So far not so bad; not something I would have done but to each their own. This is where it gets weird. Apparently she had some kind of transcendental revelation by wearing the afro. Instead of putting it in her attic or under her bed to be forgotten until next Halloween she decided to keep wearing it. I'll let that sink in for a moment. She's been wearing this wig out and about all over the town. She documents all of her excursions on her blog, very public excursions. It get's even weirder when she writes about going to a fried chicken festival, which naturally required her to wear the wig. That in and of itself is offensive, even to someone as sheltered as me. On a side note, she refers to her gay male friends as "the gays" which is a completely different beast that I won't get into here.



She posts copious pictures of her in the wig, her in the wig with black people, and sometimes just black people that happen to be near her. The whole thing has an air of...I don't even know what. Maybe idolatry but definitely ignorance. I'm not going to lecture anyone on how to live their lives, because generally I don't care. But this is such an obviously stupid thing to do that it baffles me. Not to mention the fact that she looks completely ridiculous. Lapidos claims several times on her blog that she understands and is aware of the social implications and ramifications of appropriating black culture the way that she has. However, she continues to do it on a regular basis. In one glorious picture of her at a block party in Brooklyn Lapidos is grinding up on a bemused black man, oblivious to the side eye that a young black woman is giving her. On her blog she pontificates about how she felt liberated, strong, and maybe just a little bit cooler. The fact that she would need some kind of exaggerated, external affect to feel this way is troubling, not to mention the plethora of other problems attached to it. Lapidos also writes of how the whole thing is a kind of social experiment to better the universe, "My ultimate goal here is to help people all over the world look deeper within themselves so they can master their consciousness and fall madly in love with every detail of their lives." There is so much delusional crazy in that sentence that I can't begin to understand where she is coming from. I get being misunderstood. I get searching for an identity. I've been through several before I finally settled on one that feels right (news flash Michelle, the identity I chose is just being myself). I'm all for self expression and experimenting with your image, but Lapidos is toeing a dangerous line here. Perhaps the worst part is her general attitude regarding the criticism she's received. Instead of just listening to what people have to say about it and learning from it, she basically dismisses the criticism and blindly chalks it up to a difference in opinion. She even invites her detractors to lunch where they can have an open and honest dialogue about it. She just doesn't get it.

Recently I've heard the term "post-racial" used to describe our society. I don't know how to feel about that quite yet, but I do know that openly flaunting something so intrinsic to a specific race and acting like it's perfectly normal isn't right. Many people use the term "white privilege" to describe Lapidos and her antics. That's a concept I've had a hard time grappling with over the past few years. I'd like to think that something like that doesn't exist and in many ways I think it has more to do with class privilege or socio-economic privilege than race. However, I can't deny that it is a valid point. In response to the increasing amount of flack that she has gotten this week Lapidos posted a response blog to her critics. In it she talks about hearing every and all complaint and about understanding where people are coming from. Her solution was to discontinue wearing the wig immediately and to educate herself on the history of race relations in this country and the diverse and varied cultures we citizens have...just kidding! She bought a blond afro wig instead because that will make everything better.

I don't know what the future holds for Lapiods, wether or not she will eventually learn that what she's doing isn't right (and that she looks completely crazy doing it). I don't know if she'll blindly continue down this path until it reaches its inevitable conclusion. Hell, maybe I'm wrong and Lapidos is actually more evolved than all of us. Maybe she's just post-everything, but I don't think so. To be honest, I feel weird condemning someone for doing something that even I don't completely understand. I'm white so I'll never know what exactly that hair means to the race that it belongs to. I wouldn't expect someone else to understand me or my journey through life. However, I once heard someone say something about race and privilege that was so profound I've never forgotten it and I wish that someone would say it to Lapidos, "Privilege is invisible to those who have it."

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