Ariana Grande Is Italian, Not Hispanic—But Fox News Somehow Missed the Memo

In today’s edition of Wanting To Be Oppressed So Bad That They Forget Facts, Fox News anchor Gina Loudon had much to say about Wicked and Ariana Grande.

Loudon, a former media advisor to President-elect Donald Trump, really wanted to be oppressed when she gave her “hot take” on the record-breaking movie. She might be proud of how she hemmed and hawed about the injustice she thinks is happening, but we want to set the record straight and remind her that she is just plain wrong.

Loudon thinks that Ariana Grande is ‘obviously Hispanic’

Now, we know that sometimes it is difficult to understand the various versions of whiteness when you are red in the face, but Ariana Grande is not Hispanic. Actually, she is Italian, which is European, and, by all accounts, has a white heritage.

We get it. We have seen MAGA pundits and supporters spend almost a decade trying to paint themselves as victims of “wokeness” or “racism.” However, this is categorically untrue. Most importantly, it isn’t true because of moments like this where they try to make a case of racism and “cultural appropriation” because of what they perceive to be a slight against white people.

According to Loudon, the casting of Ariana Grande, a white woman, was “woke,” “racist,” and “cultural appropriation.” She also was upset that the white character was portrayed as a villain in the film. Loudon, in her misinformed rant, appealed to the white people who feel oppressed when she pushed back against a perceived narrative that all white people are villains and evil. Which, like, that’s not a real thing, but go off babes.

In a wild but not surprising study from the Public Religion Research Institute, a majority of white people claim that “discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.” Let that sink in for just a second. The people who have seen their ideology forced on minority communities for centuries see themselves as oppressed at the same level as the minorities they have oppressed.

It brings forward the quote many of us have heard, “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression,” coined by American film executive Franklin Leonard.

Racism is a system that allows for oppression based on power

In her book “Developing New Perspectives on Race,” author Patricia Bidol-Padva laid out how racism is more than just prejudice. Anyone can be prejudiced, but to be racist means that there are mechanisms in place for you to oppress people based on prejudice. By and large, minority communities have never had the institutional power to oppress white people.

According to Bidol-Padva’s argument, in order to be racist, there has to be a combination of racial prejudice and the social power to codify policy that enforces that prejudice in a society at large. Basically, if you look at our history, it has always been white people who have been able to take their prejudices and create laws around them that hurt and oppressed minority communities. 

For example, the family separation policy that took thousands of immigrant children from their parents, with no way to track them, when they were seeking asylum is a racist policy that targeted brown people at the southern border.

In this example, white lawmakers in the United States passed a policy based on their ideas of who the asylum seekers are “non-whites.” The policy was a way to dehumanize them and devalue their humanity as they sat in detention centers and lost members of their families.

So, while this is likely an attempt to go viral and become a relevant person in politics, it is still important to call out false narratives and lies when we see them.