An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

acism and sexism, as well as across domains of power, namely structural,
disciplinary, cultural, and interpersonal.” 17
Beck’s commentary breaks down issues of power, including invisibility
and the violence suffered by Indigenous women, but not once does she
mention that, in spite of Minaj’s celebrity, she is still a Black woman. Yes,
Minaj profits off her hypersexuality; yes, she benefits from her celebrity
and can have a major impact on others; and yes, celebrities be hella out of
touch with the reality of others, but she still deals with sexism and racism
because she is a Black woman. (I should put it out there that I am absolutely
not a Nicki stan!) Minaj is guilty of utilizing the Disney-created
Pocahontas, but she did not create it—Disney did. And as far as the art
goes, Beck did not spend that same energy criticizing the artist. The artist,
David Salamanca, who is a white-looking Argentinian artist, created the
image—where was the rage about him? What about Paper? Who is the
editor of the magazine? Why were they not the main target of the criticism?
This image represents the complications that Black and Indigenous
women’s hypersexualization and Indian play in the capitalist media. Nicki
Minaj is wrong. The artist is wrong, and has some, perhaps, racist ideas. If
playing Indian is also about the creation of a sense of self, this photo
doesn’t much change Minaj’s persona of a Black woman empowered
through hypersexualization within the capitalist cultural marketplace—a
market that continues to negatively portray Black women. Indeed, as black
feminist critic bell hooks notes in her essay “Selling Hot Pussy:
Representations of Black Female Sexuality in the Cultural Marketplace,”
Bombarded with images representing black female bodies as
expendable, black women have either passively absorbed this
thinking or vehemently resisted it. Popular culture provides countless
examples of black female appropriation and exploitation of “negative
stereotypes” to either assert control over the representation or at least
reap the benefits of it. Since black female sexuality has been
represented in racist/sexist iconography as more free and liberated,
many black women singers, irrespective of the quality of their voices,
have cultivated an image which suggests they are sexually available
and licentious. 18