Race-Swapping at the Super Bowl: Kendrick Lamar’s Uncle Sam Jackson
There is a tradition of turning Black and Brown characters from history White; for example, turning Jesus and Mother Mary White. This is known as whitewashing. Race-swapping, on the other hand, is an Indigenous tradition and “decolonial aesthetic,” which Walter Mignolo (2013) defines as an “intervention and re-valuation of what has been made invisible or devalued by the modern-colonial order.” Race-swapping counteracts whitewashing, and it helps us see race in a new way.
We can look at other popular race-swaps in contemporary art to help situate Kendrick Lamar’s Uncle Sam. The Wiz (1978) replaces everyone in the Wizard of Oz with people of color; Jay-Z recreates an episode of Friends with a cast of Black actors for Moonlight (2017); Lin-Manuel Miranda replaces famous White people with actors of color in Hamilton (2015); photographer Carell Augustus replaces White actors from iconic films with Black actors; Chris Buck race-swaps white dolls at a toy store; Photographer Tyler Shields race-swaps a lynching. Robert Colescott paints George Washington black in George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware (which recently sold for $15.3 million), and Halle Bailey plays Ariel in The Little Mermaid (2023). While each artist has different reasons for race-swapping, the overall effect brings more attention to racial bias, and reimagines histories to be more representative and more accurate.
“Program or be programmed.” I think we can consider the metaphor of file sharing permissions to better understand race-swapping in art. There are generally two types of files, read only (RO) and read/write (RW), and colonized people will remix the dominant culture’s materials in order to read/write them, re-write them, and resist them. It’s a way to exercise some degree of agency and autonomy; to experience something other than read-only.
It’s a counter-intuitive Aikido move using the power of the opponent against them. Cree artist Kent Monkman likes to race-and-gender swap by inserting gender-queer bodies into famous historical images that were used to erase them. It’s correcting the record. Similarly, the passion play Corpus Christi by Terrence McNally replaces Jesus and his straight-by-default disciples with openly gay people.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, the personification of Mexico, may be another example of this sort of race-swapping. The story goes that Juan Diego in the 16th century was visited by a Native American Mother Mary, who spoke to him in his Native tongue. Her star-spangled image quickly spread, and is now arguably the most distributed image of all time. Is she the Middle Eastern Mary dressed up as a Native American? Is she a Native American dressed up as Maria?
On one level, Our Lady of Guadalupe represents the quickest way to convert or assimilate a people: make the new God look like them so they can relate to it. But on another level, she represents the best way to stay connected to Indigenous roots in the face of genocide: make the new God look like you, so you are continually reminded of your own people. Remixing is survivance.
These images highlight how history is always a blend of fact and fantasy. By changing the race of Uncle Sam–the personification of the US– Lamar is read/writing this important file, to resist it, “own” it, beat it. It’s a way to recenter Black bodies in the history of the US, correcting the record, and compliments Lamar’s other choice for the Super Bowl: an American Flag made out of Black and Brown bodies.