Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams” video is here (“finally!” - someone, I’m sure) and it’s the exact African safari paradise that we were promised! Lions! Elephants! Shirtless Scott Eastwood! And, bizarrely, nary a black person in sight. 
 
 The video, premiering at the MTV VMAs and directed by Joseph Kahn, tells an Out of Africa-inspired tale of two actors who fall in love while shooting an adventure/romance on the Serengeti. Sure, it’s all passion and desire while on location (isn’t it funny how wild things get in Africa?), but once back in Hollywood and shooting on a soundstage, our poor lovelorn colonizers just can’t get it together. Sigh. 
 
 By the way, as announced at the end of the video, all proceeds made by “Wildest Dreams” will be “donated to animal conservation efforts through the African Parks Foundation of America.” Very kind of you, Taylor, but you know that animals can’t take sides in your feud with Katy Perry. ||||| Taylor Swift is once again coming under fire for one of her music videos. 
 
 On Sunday, Swift released the music video for her new single off 1989, "Wildest Dreams," which has been viewed more than 12 million times in just under three days. However, it is already catching heat for what some are seeing as racial insensitivity. 
 
 The story depicted in the video tells the tale of two 1940s-era movie stars (Swift and The Longest Ride star Scott Eastwood) who, for most of the video, are shooting a film on-location in the African desert. 
 
 WATCH: What's the Secret Behind Taylor Swift's Unstoppable Power? 
 
 As NPR pointed out in a lengthy critique titled "Taylor Swift Is Dreaming Of A Very White Africa," despite the video being shot partially in Africa, black performers are not prominently featured on screen, though some of Africa's native animals -- lions, zebras, giraffes and cheetahs – are. There appear to be two black actors playing soldiers; however, they only appear in the background during several moments of the music video. 
 
 "Taylor Swift is dressed as a colonial-era woman on African soil. With just a few exceptions, the cast in the video — the actors playing her boyfriend and a movie director and his staff — all appear to be white," NPR contributors Viviane Rutabingwa and James Kassafa Arinaitwe write in their commentary of the video. "We are shocked to think that in 2015, Taylor Swift, her record label and her video production group would think it was okay to film a video that presents a glamorous version of the white colonial fantasy of Africa." 
 
 "Swift's music is entertaining for many,” Rutabingwa and Arinaitwe add. "She should absolutely be able to use any location as a backdrop. But she packages our continent as the backdrop for her romantic songs devoid of any African person or storyline, and she sets the video in a time when the people depicted by Swift and her co-stars killed, dehumanized and traumatized millions of Africans. That is beyond problematic." 
 
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 They are not the only media pointing out the glaring discrepancy. Many other outlets have raised similar concerns. 
 
 "Instead of the cultural appropriation that has become almost status quo in today's pop music, Swift has opted for the bolder option of actually just embodying the political exploitation of a region and its people,” wrote Huffington Post reporter Lauren Duca, who said the video channeled "white colonialism." 
 
 "It's brave, really,” Duca continued. "Almost as brave as moving sensuously in the vicinity of a real-life lion." 
 
 (Swift’s proceeds from the video will be donated to the African Parks Foundation of America, according to a title card at the end.) 
 
 "Taylor Swift’s 'Wildest Dreams' video is here," wrote Jezebel’s Madeleine Davis. "And it's the exact African safari paradise that we were promised! Lions! Elephants! Shirtless Scott Eastwood! And, bizarrely, nary a black person in sight." 
 
 WATCH: Taylor Swift and Scott Eastwood Get Steamy in 'Wildest Dreams' Teaser 
 
 
 
 Many critics remarked that the video appeared to be an homage to the 1985 film Out of Africa, which ended up taking home seven Oscars despite being generally disliked by critics in the years following its release. 
 
 "An homage to a love triangle about white colonialists is going to present some, uh, challenges to an artist who just wants to make a three-minute music video to put on her VEVO page—and Taylor Swift found that out the hard way,"The Daily Dot’s Nico Lang wrote. "Even the most casual observer would have noticed that -- for a clip that’s set in Africa -- it’s about as white as a Sunday morning farmer's market." 
 
 "The video wants to have its old-school Hollywood romance but ends up eating some old-school Hollywood racism, too," Lang added. 
 
 However, many of Swift's fans were wildly supportive of the video -- and the star's stunning new brunette look -- and shared their love on Twitter. 
 
 Can we talk about how wildly gorgeous @taylorswift13 is with brunette hair?! I LOVE IT! #WildestDreamsMusicVideo — Sofia Hassounia (@sofiahassounia) September 2, 2015 
 
 Swift has not yet publicly addressed the criticism or responded to ET’s request for comment. 
 
 NEWS: Taylor Swift's 'Shake It Off' Video Director Hits Back at Racist Claims 
 
 
 
 Swift faced similar criticism just over a year ago for the music video to her megahit single "Shake It Off,” the first single from 1989. Some said then that Swift was guilty of cultural appropriation and "perpetuating black stereotypes" due to a number of her wardrobes and dance numbers in the video. 
 
 Swift recently rocked out in Los Angeles for four days as part of her 1989 World Tour. Check out the video below to see which superstars joined the "Blank Space" singer on stage for her final night in L.A. 
 
 Related Gallery ||||| Taylor Swift Is Dreaming Of A Very White Africa 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption YouTube YouTube 
 
 The video for American singer Taylor Swift's new song "Wildest Dreams" has been viewed more than 10 million times in the two days since it debuted. 
 
 The video was shot in Africa and California. 
 
 This essay reflects the opinions of the authors, Viviane Rutabingwa and James Kassaga Arinaitwe. Rutabingwa was born in Nairobi, Kenya, at the twilight of the Ugandan civil war to Ugandan parents. After completing her higher education in public health, she joined the Global Health Corps (GHC) and spent a year working as a Policy Support Officer in a maternal and child health project in rural western Uganda. In 2014, together with a team of three Ugandans and GHC Alumni, Viviane founded A Place For Books — an initiative to empower local communities by supporting village/town libraries across rural Uganda to advocate for literature. Arinaitwe grew up in rural Uganda. He lost his parents and four siblings to infectious diseases — AIDS, measles, malaria — and to cancer. He was raised by his grandmother, who sent him on a 300-mile bus journey when he was 11 to seek financial help from the president to cover his secondary school fees. With help from the first lady, he continued his education and went on to attend Florida State University. Since graduating, he has worked to help at-risk youth in Uganda and has been a 2012-13 Global Health Corps Fellow and a New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute as well. 
 
 In it, we see two beautiful white people falling in love while surrounded by vast expanses of beautiful African landscapes and beautiful animals — a lion, a giraffe, a zebra. 
 
 Taylor Swift is dressed as a colonial-era woman on African soil. With just a few exceptions, the cast in the video — the actors playing her boyfriend and a movie director and his staff — all appear to be white. 
 
 We are shocked to think that in 2015, Taylor Swift, her record label and her video production group would think it was OK to film a video that presents a glamorous version of the white colonial fantasy of Africa. Of course, this is not the first time that white people have romanticized colonialism: See Louis Vuitton's 2014 campaign, Ernest Hemingway's Snows of Kilimanjaro, the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia and of course Karen Blixen's memoir Out of Africa. 
 
 But it still stings. 
 
 Here are some facts for Swift and her team: Colonialism was neither romantic nor beautiful. It was exploitative and brutal. The legacy of colonialism still lives quite loudly to this day. Scholars have argued that poor economic performance, weak property rights and tribal tensions across the continent can be traced to colonial strategies. So can other woes. In a place full of devastation and lawlessness, diseases spread like wildfire, conflict breaks out and dictators grab power. 
 
 Swift's "Wildest Dreams" are a visual representation of what the Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina writes about in his Granta Magazine essay, "How to Write About Africa." 
 
 "In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn't care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular." 
 
 YouTube 
 
 Why be encumbered with the African people or show them in your "Wildest Dreams" video when they are busy mutilating each other and their genitals? 
 
 The bigger problem is that many Americans have never had an African history lesson. So we don't totally blame Taylor Swift, but the people behind the video should have done a little more research. They should have wondered how Africans would react. 
 
 To those of us from the continent who had parents or grandparents who lived through colonialism (and it can be argued in some cases are still living through it), this nostalgia that privileged white people have for colonial Africa is awkwardly confusing to say the least and offensive to say the most. Allison Swank in her critique of the 1985 movie Out of Africa explains it well when she considers the character of Karen Blixen, portrayed by Meryl Streep: "The nostalgia her character creates for a time when an elegant, strong white woman could run a farm in Africa covers up the ugliness of that [colonial] idea. It undermines key colonial truths, like the fact that her 'strength,' or privilege, relies on the colonial order." 
 
 Across the continent, we are in the middle of an exciting African boom and a technological and leadership renaissance of sorts, led by the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the formerly colonized and enslaved. Waterfalls and mountains and majestic animals do not represent a full picture of our homelands. 
 
 Swift's music is entertaining for many. She should absolutely be able to use any location as a backdrop. But she packages our continent as the backdrop for her romantic songs devoid of any African person or storyline, and she sets the video in a time when the people depicted by Swift and her co-stars killed, dehumanized and traumatized millions of Africans. That is beyond problematic. 
 
 And then she decided to donate the proceeds from advertisements linked to her video to the charity African Parks Foundation of America. If you travel to some of Africa's parks, you'll see the rangers and guides are black Africans. 
 
 So why not show them in the video? 
 
 James Kassaga Arinaitwe is an Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow and a Global Fellow at Acumen. He worked as a special projects manager at LabourNet, an organization in Bangalore, India, that seeks to improve the lives of workers. He tweets @JamesArinaitwe 
 
 Viviane Rutabingwa is a public health professional with a focus on the uninsured and refugees. She is a Global Health Corps alumni and a founding member of A Place For Books. She tweets @Rootsi ||||| If you’re going to pay tribute to a Meryl Streep movie, Out of Africa is an undoubtedly odd choice. Very loosely based on Isak Dinesen’s autobiographical novel about a woman in a “marriage of convenience” who begins an affair with a local hunter (Robert Redford), OOA had its Crash moment in 1986, winning seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The problem is that it’s not very good—in fact, it’s widely remembered as one of the worst movies to take home top honors at the ceremony. If you’re going to get your Streep on, why not Silkwood or The Devil Wears Prada? The French Lieutenant’s Woman? Even a Mamma Mia tribute would make for a good drinking game. 
 
 An homage to a love triangle about white colonialists is going to present some, uh, challenges to an artist who just wants to make a three-minute music video to put on her VEVO page—and Taylor Swift found that out the hard way. The singer debuted her vid for “Wildest Dreams” at the VMAs Sunday night, and even the most casual observer would have noticed that—for a clip that’s set in Africa—it’s about as white as a Sunday morning farmer’s market. Featuring Scott Eastwood (son to Clint), the video wants to have its old-school Hollywood romance but ends up eating some old-school Hollywood racism, too. And it’s sadly indicative of its star’s own shoddy racial politics. 
 
 In a recent essay for Refinery29 , Lauren Le Vine referred to Taylor Swift’s music videos as “ timeless fantasies ,” and there’s apparently nothing more timeless than white colonialism. From Swift’s dark, Streep-esque black hair to its Fitzgerald-goes-on-safari costuming and Instagram -ready savannah backdrop, the video is both stunning and stunningly tone-deaf. As the Huffington Post ’s Lauren Duca writes , “instead of the cultural appropriation that has become almost status quo in today's pop music, Swift has opted for the bolder option of actually just embodying the political exploitation of a region and its people.” Duca really hits the nail on the head here: Just because you represent the past or pay respect to it doesn't mean you need to recreate its worst aspects. 
 
 However, this isn’t the first time Swift has been accused of “accidental racism“ in her work. After her video for “Shake It Off” debuted last August, rapper Earl Sweatshirt accused the singer of “perpetuating black stereotypes,” especially in a segment where Swift dressed up in gold chains and hoop earrings while sliding underneath the legs of a twerking black woman. 
 
 The Pitchfork Review's senior editor Jessica Hopper argued it was even worse than a similar moment in Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop.” “Miley used women of color as props, but her appropriation was participatory,” Hopper wrote. “In a strange way, her dancing with them is maybe a modicum ‘better’ than Taylor tunneling out from underneath these legs and looking up with this smirk, like ‘Isn’t this wacky? I don’t even understand?’” 
 
 As Chris Osterndorf pointed out last year in an op-ed for the Daily Dot, this is a music problem as much as it is a Taylor Swift problem, as musicians—especially female pop stars—often struggle to appreciate other cultures without stepping over the line. From Selena Gomez’ bindi and Pharrell’s Native American headdress to whatever was going on in Avril Lavigne’s “Hello Kitty” video, being a humble, respectful guest in someone else’s culture is difficult, and many continue to get it wrong. To an extent, appropriation is also the history of rock music itself, which borrowed elements of blues from black musicians for the profit of white artists. 
 
 Just because you represent the past or pay respect to it doesn't mean you need to recreate its worst aspects. 
 
 But it’s this erasure that’s becoming a problem in Taylor Swift’s music—and her budding politics. Two years after publicly disavowing the label, Swift officially came out as a feminist in 2014, and in her VMAs speech last night, accepting Video of the Year for “Bad Blood,” she injected some girl power. Swift said, “There’s been a lot of discussion about this video and what it means, but I’m just happy that in 2015, we live in a world where boys can play princesses and girls can play soldiers.” 
 
 It was a nice moment from a star whose worldview is evolving, but her recent Twitter spat with Nicki Minaj pointed out its limits: Swift infamously erased the hip-hop star’s critique about racism, choosing instead to tone-police her and preach female solidarity instead. The Huffington Post’s Zena Blay referred to it as “peak white feminism,” an unfortunate phenomenon of using issues of gender to erase systemic racial discrimination. 
 
 After the VMA nominations were announced in July, Minaj took to the social media platform to complain about her snub for “Anaconda”—which was left out of the “Video of the Year” race, despite becoming an inescapable cultural force—pointing out, “If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies, you will be nominated for vid of the year.” Swift responded on Twitter, “I've done nothing but love & support you. It's unlike you to pit women against each other.” 
 
 They publicly made up and Swift even came out to join Nicki Minaj last night during the show’s opener, a performance of Minaj’s “The Night Is Still Young.” The two embraced on stage, and while it seemed to bury the hatchet, it was pulled out of the ground later in the evening. During her aforementioned VMAs speech, the “Bad Blood” squad joined her on stage—including Hailee Steinfeld, Cara Delevingne, and Mariska Hargitay—but one person was conspicuously missing: Nicki Minaj. During their Twitter exchange, Swift promised Minaj: “If I win, please come up with me!! You’re invited to any stage I’m ever on.” She also failed to get a mention in Swift’s speech. 
 
 @NICKIMINAJ If I win, please come up with me!! You're invited to any stage I'm ever on. — Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) July 21, 2015 
 
 The difference here is crucial: Swift instead got an invite to Nicki Minaj’s stage. Thus, it seems that Taylor Swift is still having trouble making room for people of color on her own platform—whether her overwhelmingly white friend group, that’s in her music videos, or her version of solidarity. Swift has recently made her name on empowering young women, but she needs to rethink her definition of what empowerment means—and who it leaves out. 
 
 As punk singer Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill recently pointed out, her continued engagement matters to her millions of fans that follow her every move. “When somebody that’s a huge megastar that has so many young fans, like Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus or Beyoncé, comes out and says, ‘I’m a feminist,’ I mean, that’s the sound of hundreds of thousands of girls typing the word into the Internet,” Hanna said. That’s incredible cultural influence, and it’s important for her feminism to continue to evolve—by making mistakes, learning from them, and striving to show that she’s doing the work of inclusivity. 
 
 While it’s admirable and awesome that Swift has showed up to the party, it would be nice if everyone else at Swift’s party didn’t look exactly like her. Just because Taylor Swift’s videos are out of Africa doesn’t mean her politics have to be, too. 
 
 Nico Lang is the Opinion Editor for the Daily Dot. 
 
 Photo via TaylorSwiftVevo/YouTube ||||| Taylor Swift arrived at the VMAs with her squad of thin, mostly blonde women and proceeded to premiere her music video for "Wildest Dreams" on Sunday. It featured Scott Eastwood, those high-waisted pants that the villains wear in "Pocahontas" and what sure felt a lot like some harkening back to white colonialism. 
 
 The opening shot pans over antelope or some other sort of animal gathering in the desert. Then there's a giraffe, Taylor Swift with black hair and Eastwood, who is either squinting or confused as to why he is making this ambiguous movie about what, again, feels a lot like white colonialism. 
 
 We had trouble tracking the plot of the pseudo-film within this video, which was directed by Joseph Kahn. It appears to include some of the lyrics to "Wildest Dreams" or maybe just the line which Eastwood mouths to Swift. "Say you'll see me again," he lip-syncs to her while still squinting. (There is a clear romantic undercurrent to the major storyline in which the two acquire control over an moderately sized African region.)
– Taylor Swift's new video for "Wildest Dreams" was shot partially in Africa, so of course, it features giraffes, zebras ... and lots of white people. As far as James Kassaga Arinaitwe and Viviane Rutabingwa, writing in NPR, can tell, there's not a single black actor in the video. (ETOnline points out that there are, but they're only background players and appear very briefly.) The storyline involves Swift and her male love interest, decked out in colonial-era garb, filming an old-timey movie in Africa, and the whole thing is very romantic and glamorous. The problem? As Arinaitwe and Rutabingwa point out, "Colonialism was neither romantic nor beautiful. It was exploitative and brutal. The legacy of colonialism still lives quite loudly to this day." "To those of us from the continent who had parents or grandparents who lived through colonialism (and it can be argued in some cases are still living through it), this nostalgia that privileged white people have for colonial Africa is awkwardly confusing to say the least and offensive to say the most," they continue. They're not the only ones upset: "The truth: The African continent endured unspeakable brutality under European colonial rule," writes Zak Cheney-Rice at Mic. "Millions of people were enslaved, tortured or killed under violent systems of European law enforcement, forced labor and segregationist policies, fueled by a ravenous export economy that plundered much of the continent's natural resources and left many African nations indebted to—and often financially dependent on—their white former enslavers." "Instead of the cultural appropriation that has become almost status quo in today's pop music, Swift has opted for the bolder option of actually just embodying the political exploitation of a region and its people," writes Lauren Duca at the Huffington Post. "It's brave, really." "It’s the exact African safari paradise that we were promised!" writes Madeleine Davies at Jezebel. "Lions! Elephants! Shirtless Scott Eastwood! And, bizarrely, nary a black person in sight." "Even the most casual observer would have noticed that—for a clip that’s set in Africa—it’s about as white as a Sunday morning farmer’s market," writes Nico Lang at the Daily Dot. The "accidental racism" is "sadly indicative of its star’s own shoddy racial politics." Fader's headline: "Taylor Swift Went To Africa To Film A Music Video And There’s Only White People In It"