Deconstructing the "white gaze" from Cardi B vs. Nicki Minaj

I wake up and the first thing I read on my phone is that last night Cardi B and Nicki Minaj almost got into a brawl. Ooop! I knew it. Today is going to be one of those social media days when everyone is arguing and going back and forth about who was right and wrong. Within the situation there is a lot to unpack. But siding with Cardi or Nicki isn’t something I want to get into in this post.

The anti-Blackness for sure popped out in the social media comments about the altercation. I wasn’t surprised that most of these comments were aimed at Cardi. Cardi’s outspokenness, her past as a stripper, and her loud personality have caused people to stereotype her as “ghetto”, “ratchet”, or “hood” and even critique her for this. The altercation that went down between her Nicki Minaj has given people more of a reason to critique her behavior in a public and predominantly white space, but she stated in “Best Life” (feat. Chance the Rapper) “I never had a problem showing yall the real me…never did I change never did I switch story stayed the same”. Why did the world expect Cardi B to not be “ratchet” or “ghetto” (who she naturally is) just because she has money now or just because she was at New York Fashion Week? She told us exactly who she is in that song and many others from Invasion of Privacy. That doesn’t give the world the right to critique her for not acting how they deemed appropriate in this specific space.

The white gaze is defined as the idea of white people policing or monitoring the behavior of people of color in white spaces. Black people especially always feel this gaze upon them. It is what makes Black people want to behave meekly for the sake of gaining respectability. It is also what makes Black people enforce respectability politics within their own community because there is this idea that doing so will erase the negative stereotypes cast upon Black people as a group.

Enforcing the antithesis to a stereotype will not reverse these stereotypes. Acting less “ghetto” or being quiet around white people in general is not going to make racists stop hating you, nor will it stop Black people from dying at the hands of white supremacy. It’s safe to say that New York Fashion Week events are white spaces but at the same time, these spaces aren’t that professional. Supposedly every year NYFW is drug central…oh but that isn’t ghetto. We call Cardi ghetto for fighting at New York Fashion Week but what about the white women who get into fights at social events? What about the ones that are on TV doing it? The infamous Real Housewives? They’re doing the same thing as Cardi but are not labeled as ghetto because the term ghetto only applies to people of color, specifically Black and Brown people.

The idea that Black people should behave differently for the sake of the white gaze is not only anti-Black but classist based on how “elite” these spaces are. We might never know who was truly wrong in this situation, nor is it any of our business tbh, but Black people classifying Cardi’s actions as ghetto just because it is a white space will only further the community enforcing respectability politics in response to the white gaze.

We often uplift and value some of these events more than our own. That is why a Black person can comfortably criticize Cardi’s actions and say, “She was acting too ratchet at NYFW, this ain’t the BET awards”. It’s ok to act a certain way around other Black people but not at a mainstream event where there are tons of white people present. I think this celebrity news gives us an opportunity to think about the white gaze, white spaces, and how it is enforced upon people of color. So often our behavior is based on who is observing us or who is in the room when we should feel free to be who we are. Lets talk about it! Comment below.

P.S. Stop spreading that rumor Mary J Blige got into it with Faith Evans. Receipts or it didn’t happen lol!