The Ignorance of the White Passing Olivia Rodrigo Debate
Who gets to decide who’s white-passing or not?
Olivia Rodrigo is the next big thing. If you haven’t heard of her, you have probably heard of her hit song “Driver’s License” which blew up earlier this year. It was constantly played on the radio, used in videos on social media, and started rumors of a potential love triangle. The song encapsulated the entire world. You couldn’t have possibly escaped it. And if you somehow did, you must have been living under a rock. When “Driver’s License” blew up earlier this year, it was everywhere and so was Olivia. Like everyone who has experienced newfound success and fame, Olivia was thrown under a microscope that is the public’s eye. Suddenly, people had questions they wanted to be answered about her. What’s the story behind Driver’s License? Where did Olivia come from? Is she an industry plant? Neither one of those stories are what I want to talk about.
Instead I want to talk about the debate surrounding Olivia’s racial identity. You may or may not know this, but Olivia is biracial. Olivia is white from her mother’s side and Filipino from her dad’s side. Apparently, this is a cause of debate. People aren’t arguing about Olivia’s identity, more so about how her identity is perceived. There are some people who believe Olivia is white-passing and there are some people who believe she is not. For those of you who don’t know, the definition of white-passing is when a person of color is viewed or accepted by the world as a white person. Aka they can pass for being white because of what they look like. The internet has once again taken it upon itself to compete in a debate as to whether Olivia is white-passing or not. The fact that this is even a topic for discussion is a problem in and of itself.
I’m not completely sure where this debate comes from, but I became aware of it when there were arguments on Twitter from fans on both sides of the debate. Try as I might, to avoid discussions involving Twitter fan wars, they always pull me in. The people who I noticed involved in this debate were fans of Olivia and people who disliked Olivia, most likely due to her immediate rise to the charts and popularity. I observed people saying because Olivia is half white and “doesn’t look Asian”, she is white-passing. Then I would see Olivia’s fans countering this by saying Olivia doesn’t have the typical East Asian features that society has conditioned us into thinking every Asian person has. It’s an infuriating topic to have.
It feels on one side, people are denying a part of Olivia’s identity to fit her into a box they want to place her in. That’s so obviously wrong that I don’t need to explain why that is upsetting to see. But on the other side of the debate, it feels like some of Olivia’s fans are using Olivia’s race to win an argument they are having with people who dislike Olivia. I think a good example of this is when Olivia’s latest single Good 4 U and BTS’s single Butter were competing for the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100, some fans used Olivia’s race as a reason why she should “win”. They believed it would be nice to have a Asian woman on top of the Billboard Hot 100. While some of BTS fans tried to invalidate Olivia’s identity by pointing out she’s only half Filipino, not fully Asian in order to justify why she shouldn’t “win”. And instead BTS should win because they are a fully Asian act.
I don’t understand this, but it’s a thing that I am seeing constantly surrounding the conversation involving Olivia. Her race either validates her success or invalidates it. I find the entire debate to be problematic in so many ways. The one that infuriates me the most is that yet again people are dictating how people of color choose to identify themselves. No one should ever get to tell another person that they don’t belong to their community because they are biracial or that they don’t look like their race enough. We don’t decide what our genetics are going to be or the features we will be born with. It’s not the person of color’s fault if you mistook them for being white.
Olivia, for her part, has acknowledged many times that she is half Filipino. She hasn’t shied away from her experiences as a biracial woman or from her Filipino roots. In the television show she currently stars in, High School Musical: The Musical, Olivia’s character’s family is represented by Asian actors. If you can’t tell by looking at Olivia that she is a woman of color, it doesn’t take much time or a lot of work to figure it out. What more does she need to do to tell people that she is a person of color? Wear a bright neon sign that says she’s half Filipino and carry it around with her everywhere she goes? Something tells me even then that wouldn’t be enough for some people. Olivia isn’t in the wrong here, it’s the people who are invalidating her race AND the people using her race to win brownie points in pointless arguments.
What makes some people perceive Olivia to be white-passing? I have seen a few ideas. One being that some Western white pop stars are stealing people of color’s features to look racially ambiguous and it’s causing confusion about what real people of color look like. Let’s take Jesy Nelson from the band Little Mix as an example. People who were unaware about Jesy’s racial identity were under the impression she was a woman of color. If you look at Little Mix’s music videos like Sweet Melody, she appears to have a darker skin tone than fellow band member Leigh-Anne Pinnock who is Black. When it was pointed out that Jesy is indeed white, some people were shocked. Why? It’s simple really, Jesy has been blackfishing for years. Blackfishing is a term for when a person who is not Black, alters their appearance to make themselves look Black. They can do this by excessive tanning or other methods to darken their skin to paint themselves out to be Black.
The most famous example of a celebrity doing this has to be Ariana Grande. Ariana has been blackfishing for years now. The only reason why people know Ariana is white is because she was on the popular Nickelodeon show, Victorious where she looked like her own race. If she was never on Victorious, I think it’s safe to assume that most people would have assumed Ariana was Black. This isn’t to direct hate at either Jesy or Ariana. I personally like them both, but it’s fair to say they look racially ambiguous. Whether it’s intentional or not. It’s having an effect on real people of color. A person of color shouldn’t have to look like a caricature of their race just so they aren’t mistaken for being white. Newsflash people, not every one of the same race looks the same. We have different features and skin tones that make us unique to one another. But that doesn’t change our identities or the communities we belong to.
The funny thing about this entire debate is that there isn’t a definitive answer as to whether Olivia is white-passing or not. Let’s go back to the definition of white-passing, it is when someone perceives a person of color to be white. Everyone will come to their own conclusion as to whether Olivia is white-passing or not. There is no wrong or right answer. There is only your opinion. If you perceive Olivia to be white-passing, nobody can tell you are wrong. And if you don’t perceive her to be white-passing, you aren’t wrong either. That’s the beauty of having an opinion.
You can believe that Olivia is white-passing. That she passes for being white and has the luxury of reaping the benefits of white privilege. But what you can’t do is erase her Filipino identity and deny her place within her own community. Olivia may have it easier than other Asian artists because she is half white, but that doesn’t eliminate the other half of her identity. And for people using Olivia’s race as some sort of gotcha to win an argument, find something else. Her race and identity deserve so much more than to be used as a punchline in a fight. She deserves a lot better than that.
My book Living Rent Free In My Head: Essays On Pop Culture comes out on August 2, 2022. Pre-order it now for only $3.99 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other vendors.
Originally published at http://fairlyprofessional.wordpress.com on July 1, 2021.
