May 19, 2024 9:47:42 AM

Capitalism, Colonialism, & Taylor Swift [Part A3]

Because Taylor Swift is a white (middle?) upper class to 1%er she is a face of capitalism, intentional or not. I’m going to disperse Taylor Swift’s wealth, business, real estate, and general **Capitalist Queen** deets between supporting evidence that Capitalism is inextricably exploitative, and racist. Not wanting to come across as a hater picking on one individual when the problem is systemic, I have also included many (not all) donations Taylor Swift has made over the years.

An oppositional relationship is formed: The Indigenous person is not just a threat to civil man but to private property, the ultimate belonging of concern. The civil man is a cultivator, a harvester, a planter, and a worker, rooted in rationality, productivity, and morality. The Indigenous man, violent, uncontrollable, and animalistic, is useless. The white settler is of value while the Indigenous person is not. White supremacy’s role in economization returns us to the idea that those untouched and undeveloped by European values cannot properly contribute to society. Thus, even in an economic sense, the non-white person is unable to properly assert their value.

The infantilizing of people of color was done purposefully to ensure economic domination. Indigenous people are “deemed childlike, incapable of self-rule and handling their own affairs, and thus appropriately wards of the state” (Mills 13). It is incredibly profitable for the white man to view the non-white person as a child that needs looking after because it allows for him to take ownership over the non-white person in the name of taking care of them. The white person sees the non-white person as someone lacking direction and moral grounding, thus justifying the white man’s desire for control and paternalism (20).

Colonizers need for even deeper forms of control and subjugation by methods up to and including: Vigilante killings, mass imprisonment, legal lynching, military occupation, suppression of civil rights, and even carpet-bombings (22).

Descendants of the original sinners, the slave owners and the imperialists, kept benefiting from the sins of their forefathers through inheritance. Concurrent segregationist Jim Crow laws as well as redlining in districts prevented African Americans from purchasing property in predominantly White neighborhoods.

In a capitalist society, and its inherently settler colonial attitudes, value is dependent on productivity. In reference to the colonial mindset, he says that the “lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too” (2). In viewing land as something to be cultivated and dominated instead of something that has inherent value, one begins to view a human as something to be used instead of someone that has inherent existential value.

Capitalism thrives off of white supremacy because it creates a justification for the exploitation that is necessary for individuals to chase profit and hoard the means of production.

Under capitalism, different people have different economic values based on what they’re able to offer to the market. Each individual becomes defined by their economic value, which is calculated in their ability to produce, sell, market, and invest. This ideology leads to the emergence of unjust power relations (20). White American elites could more easily climb the so-called capitalist ladders of upward mobility, while black communities rot in ghettos with access to substandard education and scarce jobs that paid subsistence wages (21).

To say that involvement in the market is voluntary is an irresponsible conclusion to make, as nonwhite people, who are devalued from the market, still need access to resources, goods, and services in order to meet their own needs.

Still more!

Sources:

1] https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Lost_Boys

2] https://muse.jhu.edu/article/758591

3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231904832_Peter_Pan_and_the_White_Imperial_Imaginary

4] https://thefifth.medium.com/the-peter-pan-syndrome-epidemic-why-modern-men-are-lost-in-never-never-land-f0f052e1ec9e

5] https://aahabershaw.com/2016/02/22/boyhood-manhood-and-peter-pan/

6] http://komunikata.id/index.php/komunikata/article/view/236

7] https://animatedmeta.wordpress.com/2014/12/06/peter-pan-and-gender-roles/

8] https://honors.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/4462

9] https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/9569/1/fulltext.pdf

10] https://www.123helpme.com/essay/Gender-Roles-in-Peter-Pan-by-J-273202