Here we have like the only woman of color with origins in the Eastern third world who’s achieved some sort of pop culture relevance, and the media wrings their hands trying to “figure her out” with their nice little liberal arts educations while she apparently gets a bit of pleasure of purposely fucking with that. Her feelings on the Tamil are clearly wrapped up with her relationship and feeling for her father, and lets be honest, no one really makes sense when it comes to their daddy issues, but for some reason we demand that she does. We berate her for being in a relationship with a rich dude and apparently now write her off as a “millionaire” despite the fact she grew up in public housing in a shitty area of London. We want her to be responsible for all the questions we have about her, with out asking why we’re asking them in the first place or why it is we’re uncomfortable with her. We’re basically all saying to MIA “please make white westerners feel comfortable and wrap yourself up in a nice little bow.”

Meanwhile, the music critics have canonized white male punk rockers with shitty attitudes and messy politics.