It was an early Spring morning, the soft yellow light crept through dusty floral curtains as the young white lady arose from her upcycled bed, tenderly, ready to embody Stuart Murdoch’s archetype of an ethereal indie darling. "We are open to Eve’s nationality (e.g. British, French, Australian)," read Murdoch’s casting call for the lead character in the Belle & Sebastian bandleader's blindingly white film, God Help the Girl. One does not imagine he meant the native Aboriginal population of Australia when envisioning his perfect leading lady; the cast is entirely white.

As a lover of Belle and Sebastian, I was disappointed, though certainly not surprised. Belle and Sebastian's work is steeped in Whiteness; God Help the Girl merely underscores this. The film itself is an egregious mess that romanticizes a woman’s struggles with an eating disorder for the sake of Murdoch’s self-promotion. The optimistic, happy-go-lucky and painstakingly adorable aesthetic evidenced in every character he created is founded in Whiteness. Whiteness is beauty; Whiteness is what gives the character the ability to dream of fostering a career in music; Whiteness is what enables the audience to empathize with Eve’s character. A recurring filler in the film was a fictitious radio show where two men try to decipher what "real" indie is and every band mentioned is white, enforcing the film’s aspirational Whiteness. While Belle and Sebastian aren’t the only examples of perpetuating Whiteness through indie rock, this movie serves as a microcosmic view of what is wrought by racial exclusivity that is omnipresent in indie rock.

-=-=-=-In indie rock, white is the norm. While indie rock and the DIY underground, historically, have been proud to disassociate themselves from popular culture, there is no divorcing a predominantly white scene from systemic ideals ingrained in white Western culture. That status quo creates a barrier in terms of both the sanctioned participation of artists of color and the amount of respect afforded them, all of which sets people of color up to forever be seen as interlopers and outsiders. Whiteness is the very ideal for which art is made in Western culture, be it the cinema of Wes Anderson or, say, the artists on Merge Records.

What substantiates this are the microaggressions, as well as overt and covert expressions of racism, that happen as a result of those systemically held ideals. Some may take the success of artists of color as threat to their space or scene. White art is deemed more worthy of respect, and so white audiences respond to it positively—it is set up for success. It’s evidenced the last week of news: be it the insidious petition urging Glastonbury to drop Kanye West in favor of a "rock band" (read: a white artist), or the repeated co-option of Indian and Desi pop culture by Major Lazer going unremarked upon. White art additionally dilutes and flattens aspects of other cultures' music that it adopts in the process of making them more "accessible" for those whose curiosity does not extend beyond the parameters of Europe and North America. White "ambassadors" decide what parts of these musics of cultures get to filter through based on white notions of what is good, or real or what ethnomusical practices appeal to an American sense of authenticity (see also: Diplo).

Artists, labels and producers are not the only ones complicit in perpetuating this, though. It’s successful music publications—Pitchfork included—who have celebrated Vampire Weekend and Dirty Projectors' use of attenuated 'afro' elements, calling the latter’s music "idiosyncratic" and saying the former owes thanks to Paul Simon, the evident creator of African music. White musicians seemingly can have it all: their almost impenetrable music scenes as well as their bastardization of most any other cultures. The root work by artists of color effectively disappears.