"Grown Black Girls" podcast: rethinking aesthetics in the age of algorithms

Natalie A. Collier and Charity Clay unpack 4 big questions on the evolution of good taste  

Is the algorithm churning out a fleet of young people who look the same and sound the same? image credit: Shutterstock  

Recently, Natalie brought a question to the "Grown Black Girls" podcast table:  

Is taste something we develop or something we’re served?

Of course, that question led to other questions. Catch up on 4 big questions Charity and Natalie discussed. 

1. Where does our taste come from?    Charity: Initially, we’re served. I think the way we’re taught what we’re being served determines whether we have the ability to develop. … If you’re a kid who’s allowed to pick out their own clothes, you get the opportunity to develop your taste more than someone who’s put in Garanimals all their life.    Start at 22:17 to discover the fate of kids who were put in Garanimals all their lives.  

   
   

2. Wait. How do you define taste?    Charity: [It’s] the things you’re drawn to. … The things that register for you as symbols of other things. … I’m going to use music as an example. When D’angelo died… I realized my music taste stopped being so much what my parents were giving me and more what I was finding on my own. … D’Angelo was one of the first artists I thought was mine. My parents didn’t introduce me to D’Angelo.    Natalie: Quoting a French sociologist, Natalie summarizes good taste as “class, power, education and access. And then it gets presented as a natural superiority.” Later on she goes on to ask, “[Is] taste strictly a creative endeavor? Taste and curation, because taste requires curation. … It’s definitely not strictly a creative endeavor. It also requires some intellectualism. And I don’t mean an intellectualism in the terms of ‘I’m smarter than you are, she is smarter than I am …’

Start at 32:05 to dive into the type of intellectualism that drives taste making.  

3. So who decides what is good taste? 

Charity: The way socialization operates is to get everyone to buy into whatever the hierarchy wants you to subscribe to. The beauty of the nefariousness of these structures is that it wants you to believe it’s neutral. So the key part is socializing you to like and dislike, appreciate and not appreciate several things, while making you believe this is your own mind creating these taste preferences. 

Natalie: We’re living in an A.I. age. So much of what we do and experience is based on an algorithm. How and when do we get to develop our own taste? Do we ever? 

Charity: I remember when I started recognizing that no matter where my students were from, they were all using the same slang and dressing the same way because they’re consuming the same thing. … When you standardize the formats of a culture, you lose some of those regional differences.    

Start at 27:05 to explore why it might be harder for young people to develop their own taste. 

4. Where do Black girls and women fit in here?   Charity: For Black women, there’s always been a tipping point. We are on the outs, where we are fundamentally considered the antithesis of what’s good, what’s popular, what’s beautiful, what’s feminine, until we do something that is 1) undeniable 2) popular enough to commodify. … As Black women [we should] not get caught into having our taste validated by whiteness.    Natalie: Where Black girls and women, in particular are concerned, especially if we pretend for a moment we can exist outside the algorithm, what we are creating and developing just as a part of our being is only ever validated by the algorithm’s investment in commodifying this small part of the journey.    Start at 53:45 to hear Charity and Natalie explore the representation trap and what happens when politicians, like Jasmine Crockett, capitalize on it to mask their potentially problematic views.