Let's Find Taylor Swift a Black Friend

Taylor Swift has a lot of famous friends and girlfriend aims high too. Taylor’s squad consists of supermodels, Oscar nominees and a Penn State grad. What I’ve noticed, however, is a glaring lack of black people in her posse.

To be fair, she is friends with Demetria Lovato and Selena Gomez—so word up to my Latinas—but I’d like to round out this friendship rainbow with a bit more color. Now, I’M NOT SAYING THAT TAYLOR SWIFT IS RACIST. I’m just saying that she’s tiptoeing along the line of becoming like the three quarters of white Americans who don’t have a single non-white friend.

Luckily, I can help remedy that. I would like to find Taylor Swift a black friend or two because I hear that it’s benevolent acts like this that get you into heaven and I’m trying to chill with Oprah in the afterlife.

Not just anybody can be Taylor Swift’s first black friend. We need to find the Jackie Robinson of black friends, so let’s go through some questions that potential candidates will need to answer to my satisfaction:

How do you feel about listening to her music?

Before anyone gets too excited, this has little to do with race and is more about the fact that her music, to many adults with ears, is annoying. I’m not personally a fan, but I can understand the appeal because I am able to hold two conflicting thoughts in my brain without depleting neurons.

That being said, you’ll have to listen to her music a lot—recording sessions, backstage at concerts and for some reason I imagine Taylor Swift plays her own music a lot when she’s just hanging out. Although, Taylor is a Kendrick Lamar fan, so maybe you can introduce her to the rest of the TDE crew because as black-ish taught us, all black people know each other.

Are you comfortable with/do you have the patience to explain stuff to her?

Perhaps Taylor Swift is incredibly fluent in black culture and issues that surround black people despite the fact that I’ve never seen her in public hanging out with any black people. Maybe she sits around all day going back and forth between The Root and Media Takeout. Who knows? But I’m going to err on the side of probably not.

Lena Dunham has, it seems, singlehandedly turned Taylor Swift into a feminist. She went from spouting all that “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women” idiocy to finally being able to stomach saying the words “I” and “feminist” in the same sentence.

You have to do to her what Lena Dunham did but with race. Long story short: I expect to hear Taylor Swift critiquing the prison-industrial complex within four to sixth months from the start of your friendship.

How willing are you to take her to black events?

This is an interesting conundrum for many black people. You have white friends. They’re great! Some of them are what we could call “down,” meaning that they’re used to being around a lot of black people, they know black music, they won’t say anything stupid in front of all your black friends, etc. Then you have your other white friends who you also love and appreciate, but you’re not exactly rushing to bring them to that NAACP fundraiser, IfyaknowhatI’msayin.

So that means all those summer cookouts? The gumbo parties? The Frankie Beverly and Maze concert? She’s coming.

What you’ll want to avoid are situations like the predominately black party I once attended and the guy who brought his white girlfriend who asked, in all sincerity, if Barack Obama was a Muslim. (This probably had more to do with her being a plumb idiot than her being white, but as you can imagine, it didn’t help.)

You have to help her with the dancing.

I’m not even going to bother phrasing this as a question because this is nonnegotiable. To her credit, she has that amazing confidence of certain people who possess no rhythm. Unlike others who are completely aware that they can never find the downbeat, those like Taylor truly believe they’re hearing the rhythm correctly and that they’re matching they’re body movements along with it, so there’s no reason for them to be self-conscious about anything, ya know? They got this.

You gotta make that stop.

Do you like cats?

This is more of a general question because you’ll probably eventually get stuck lugging that cat around.

Are you cool with being the only black person around?

As far as I can tell, you’re probably going to be the only black person in attendance, at least for the time being. I doubt this is anything new for many black people, but just something to keep in mind.

All worthy candidates are welcome to apply, but in the meantime, I would like to offer what I believe to be some promising candidates:

Amandla Stenberg AKA Rue from The Hunger Games

Amandla is damn adorable and would fit in nicely with Taylor Swift’s all-around adorable life. She may only be only 16 years old, but Taylor already hangs out with 18-year-old Lorde—who is already friends with Amandla—so age really ain’t nothing but a number for Ms. Swift if you’re nasty.

Jourdan Dunn

Jourdan is friends with Taylor Swift-approved models Cara Delevingne and Karlie Kloss (Kloss is even godmother to Jourdan’s son), so this would be a seamless transition. Taylor Swift may not be a supermodel, but she’s the same height as a supermodel so they can all stand around breathing that special supermodel stratosphere air.

Jordin Sparks

Jordin Sparks and Taylor Swift sort of seem like the same person to me. They’ve got the whole music thing in common. Plus, Jordin has recently gone through a rough breakup and I actually feel like Taylor Swift is a good person to have around in this scenario—a lot of firsthand experience.

Willow Smith

This friendship would likely be short-lived but I bet Willow could seriously blow Taylor’s mind. If nothing else, maybe she could let her borrow a couple of bell hooks books.

Amber Rose

I DUNNO GUYS I THINK THIS COULD WORK. From what I gather, Amber is really sweet—like she would take Taylor under her wing and be sort of a big sister to her. Plus, Amber likely has a lot of top shelf marijuana from Wiz Khalifa, making her a very good friend to anyone.