Taylor Swift Fan? You're Racist! But Only Slightly.

Poor Taylor Swift. As though all the trials and tribulations of being a hugely famous pop tart with a net worth greater than the GDP of Sweden wasn't enough, now she has to deal with the fact that some hitherto unknown windbag is claiming that her fans are all "slightly racist."

That seems a lot like claiming someone is "slightly pregnant."

In any case, Melina Abdullah, who is a professor of Pan-African Studies (whatever that is) at Cal State University Los Angeles and, apparently, a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement, is making just this claim.

Melina Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African Studies at Cal State University Los Angeles who is a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement and once argued Jussie Smollet was framed, recently stated she thinks Taylor Swift fans are kinda racist.
Abdullah made the comments in a post on X during Super Bowl, prompting a lively debate on the platform as Swift attended the game to watch her current boyfriend, Travis Kelce, help lead his team, the Kansas City Chiefs, to victory.

Her claim that Jussie Smollett was framed firmly places Abdullah in the "paranoid conspiracy theory nutbar" category, but she sure isn't stopping there.

Abdullah also wrote on X after the game, in response to the San Francisco 49ers loss: “Why do I feel like this was some right-wing, white-supremacist conspiracy?!?! Booooooo!!!!”
“Folks think they’re attacking me by asking why I think everything is racist…I’m not offended. Virtually everything is racist,” she wrote in another post that day after her comments garnered attention.

Alas, Taylor. First, you are driven to sell one of your private luxury jets, and now this.

It's a tad ridiculous for this Abdullah, who is influencing some young skulls full of mush that are unfortunate enough to be attending Cal State University at Los Angeles, to be calling out Taylor Swift fans. Sure, if Taylor herself was any whiter she'd be transparent, but the melanin content of Taylor and her many fans means nothing in and of itself, and since Professor Abdullah does not deign to return questions about her nonsensical statement, we can have no idea where she derived this laughable notion.

I mean, it's not as though Taylor endorsed Donald Trump or anything like that.

It's a shame how things have gone downhill in the last few years, to the point where some people (many, but not all, in academia) are seeing racists in every corner. There used to be some hope for improving race relations in this country; in 1972, the R&B group The O'Jays released their single "Love Train" that spoke hopefully of a trip around the world to bring people from all nations together. The refrain of that song said this:

People all over the world (Hit by it)
Join hands (Join)
Start a love train (You)
Love train (And you)
People all over the world (All over, nah)
Join hands (Love right)
Start a love train (Love right)
Love train

In a little over fifty years, we have gone from that hopeful message to windbags like Abdullah seeing racists in every shadow, even when that insubstantial shadow is cast by the slight-framed Taylor Swift. My take? Professor Abdullah has way too much time on her hands and way too little substance between her ears.

This is most definitely appropriate.