I think this argument has things the wrong way round. People aren't too eager to find racism. On the contrary, they tend to be way, way too shy about pointing it out. When people talk about racism, they tend, in my experience, to want to look for intent, or, as with Cyrus, for stupidity. David Duke is a racist; Hitler is a racist; evil people (or very dumb people) are racist. Folks like Joplin, who are clearly well-intentioned, smart, thoughtful, and talented, are not.

But that's the whole point of comparing Cyrus and Joplin. Joplin is an amazing artist; Cyrus is an embarrassment. And yet, they're doing the same thing, because they are working in the same systems. Both are white, Southern women. Both want to get out of the bind of stereotypical white, Southern, passive femininity—which codes white women as vulnerable, desirable but not desiring, pretty, fragile, and frivolous. Both want instead to be aggressive, independent, sexual, and authentic. And both so this by deploying stereotypes of black women.

In short, racism isn't something you overcome by being an exemplary white person. Even with all her talent, even with all her skill, Joplin still ends up being racist, because the culture, and the pop milieu she exists in, is racist. In defining herself, in creating her image, she uses the materials at hand, and many of those materials are racist stereotypes. So she ends up underlining and validating those stereotypes — a fact made painfully clear (as I mentioned in the piece yesterday) by the Cheap Thrills album cover, which uses the racist caricature of a black mammy in order to situate Joplin's "Summertime" as deriving from authentic black sources. Similarly, Cyrus's equation of black females with sex is a way for her to declare herself more sexual—but it also reinforces stereotypes that have racist effects on actual black women, as Tressie McMillan Cottom outlines in some detail.

So does that mean that all white musicians, or all white people, are automatically racist? No, it doesn't. It just means that there are tropes and systems in place that are easy to use, and that lots and lots of performers have used. But if America's great blight is racism, its great saving grace is anti-racism, and there have been a number of really inspiring examples in popular music. One example is the great duet between country star Jimmie Rodgers and jazz giant Louis Armstrong, in which Rodgers treats Armstrong not as a touchstone of authenticity but as a peer, both in artistry and in the experience of being victims of the police. Another is, perhaps, Danity Kane, an integrated pop group in which black women are treated as band members rather than (a la "Scary Spice") as occasions for stereotype.

I like Danity Kane's first album, but even I, the unapologetic pop fan I am, wouldn't claim that the group is more talented than Janis Joplin. But that's the point. There isn't a direct relationship between talent and racism.