Since Donald Trump’s victory last November, many fear that our alliances with age-old allies might suffer. Thankfully, there’s one trans-Atlantic tradition that will never die: calling out Morrissey for being such a douchebag.
In a lazy attempt to project his tolerance and love for black people, Morrissey’s latest piece of merchandise features lyrics from the song Unlovable by The Smiths. The lyrics read, “I wear black on the outside/’Cause black is how I feel on the inside.” Rather inexplicably, right below the lyrics is a picture of acclaimed writer and civil-rights icon James Baldwin.
See a picture of the t-shirt below:
To be clear, there’s zero connection between the song’s content and James Baldwin, other than the fact that Baldwin is black and Morrissey sometimes feels sad. Moreover, usually when someone uses the color black as an adjective for their emotions, they’re not referring to black people. This might sound elementary to many of you, but apparently it’s worth repeating.
One possible interpretation of the shirt is that Morrissey, in the tradition of Rachel Dolezal, meant he literally feels as if he’s a black man sometimes, despite being one of the whitest human beings in history. I don’t know why he would feel this way, but I also don’t know why he made this t-shirt.
While it’s true that Morrissey has discussed his love for Baldwin’s work in his autobiography, the shirt’s design has elicited a range of responses from confusion to mockery. Claire Lobenfeld of FACT magazine wrote an article entitled “Morrissey is selling racist t-shirts because he is a f***ing idiot.” Another writer at Pitchfork remarked that the shirts “could be seen as problematic.”
The t-shirts are just another addition to a long list of controversial moves by the British singer/songwriter. In 2007, Morrissey compared the British Olympics to the “spirit of 1939 Germany.” He also drew outrage in 2011 when he called Chinese people “a subspecies” because of how they supposedly treat animals.