Unless you have been living under a rock for the past seven years, you are familiar with the 2009 feud between Kanye West and Taylor Swift. A drunk Kanye stole the mic from Taylor after she won the best video of the year and said the infamous words: "Yo, Taylor, I'm really happy for you and I'mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!" Yes, does that ring a bell? I hope so.

Fast forward to 2016 and Kanye and Taylor are good friends. They have made up and stopped feuding. So in February, Kanye released the song, "Famous" which he claimed he had Taylor Swift's blessing to release it. Well, once the song released, Taylor's camp stated, "Kanye did not call for approval, but to ask Taylor to release his single 'Famous' on her Twitter account. She declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message. Taylor was never made aware of the actual lyric, "I made that bitch famous.'"

Now fast forward to July 2016, Kim Kardashian-West releases videos on her Snapchat of the conversations between Taylor Swift and Kanye West as Taylor thanks Kanye for giving her a heads-up so that she can tell everyone that the joke was on them cause she knew about the lyrics in the song. When these videos were released, Twitter blew up calling Taylor a snake and a liar for playing the victim for a song that she already knew about. To combat this, she released this statement saying that she was never told that she would be labeled as "that bitch" in a rap song. The problem lies in that initially Taylor claims that Kanye did not ask for approval at all when in fact he did. When she was called out on it, she then said that the problem was in being called "that bitch" which she did address in the first statement but in addition to having never heard of the song. If she was honest at first and said that she knew about the song and not the specific lyrics, we would probably not be in this mess. Now that you're caught up, let's see what Taylor teaches us about race.

Taylor's narrative is not new, in fact, it's stereotypical. Dainty white woman gets attacked by a big black man, and everyone runs to her defense. Trust me, not new, but it is dangerous. History shows us that society protects white women often at the expense of people of color. Although sometimes it was warranted, for the most part, it was unjust and cruel. The most famous example is Emmett Till, a 14 year old boy who was beat to death for talking to a white cashier in 1955 in Money, MS. That white woman, Carolyn Bryant, went to her husband and swore that this little black boy attacked her, and for that he was beaten, shot in the head, and pushed into a river. A 14 year old kid was brutally murdered because a white woman played the victim. And the history goes farther with black men being castrated, lynched, and burned to death all at the thought of them so much as laying a finger on a white woman.

Yet, today in 2016, Taylor Swift thinks it's a good idea to play the victim with a black man without acknowledging the racial history and the racial tension that still exists in our society today. I am in no way saying that Kanye West is in the right. His controversial attitude often makes it hard to love or even side with him. 19 year old Taylor Swift had every right to be hurt and angry at him for what he did, but Kanye was pointing out an important thing: the overlooked hard work of black women that is overshadowed by white women. It's the same thing that Nicki Minaj pointed out last summer after the MTV Video Music Awards. In both of these instances, the hard work that black women put into the music industry were being overlooked, and in both cases, the media clung to Taylor Swift who played the victim. Yes, Beyoncé is a black woman whose talent, skill, and hard-work has earned her a spot at the top over the 19 years that she's been in the music business. Yes, she deserved Video of the Year because seven years later, we know the lyrics and the dance moves to "Single Ladies", but we still don't know what song Taylor Swift got an award for, nevertheless, what the video was about unless we Google it.

Instead of playing the victim and exploiting a very easy and dangerous stereotype, maybe Taylor should instead acknowledge the racial history behind a white woman playing the victim. Not only that, she should understand the privilege that she has, that when she says she's attacked, people flock to her. People listen to her. That's a powerful tool. She should use her voice for what matters and acknowledge the people who are constantly victimized in our society and stand up for them instead of playing the victim herself.