Holding black celebrities accountable has nothing to do with "hating"

November 23, 2011

In any piece that I write, I try to ask the reader to look in the mirror while I do the same. This is especially true when I write about race. As a black man, I feel that the greatest strides that we’ve ever made as a race have come when we took that often difficult look in the mirror. Sure, there are some difficulties in America, there have been some racist practices in the past and there are some that are still in existence. But there are always things that we can do within ourselves to improve our situation. Some things are a matter of the system and some things are a matter of us just doing better.

Something that we were able to do in the past as a race was keep each other in check. Help your brother out when he’s down and in need, but also correct him if he was wrong. Make sure that we’re representing one another. Make sure that we’re representing the race with pride. This is what made us strong. We understood that holding one another accountable was better than sitting back and hoping everything just worked out. This wasn’t 100% and there are exceptions to everything, but for the most part, this helped move our race forward.

We’re living in a different culture now. We enjoy some things that we’ve never enjoyed before. We’re multimillionaires now. We star in and direct major motion pictures now. We have top selling records now. We own record companies, production studios and clothing lines now. We’re major athletes at every position in sports, and that includes hockey, golf and tennis. We own companies now. We’re constantly in the spotlight now. We have a black President now. But all success isn’t perfect. It always comes with a glitch. With greater success comes greater scrutiny. Most people understand that. However, what I’ve noticed in the black community is we struggle with that scrutiny, especially when it comes from within our own community. I’m struggling to understand why.

Some have accused me and others like me of trying to bring another down or “hating”, but all you have to do is read my words carefully. I love my people. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t speak out when I see something wrong. We overuse the word “hating” when we see criticism just as we do the word “sellout” when one of our own is successful in ways we don’t approve of. I did recent pieces on two prominent celebrities in the black community, Jay-Z and Tyler Perry. I was critical of both and each piece brought out emotions in blacks, both positive and negative.

For the most part, there seemed to be no middle ground. The people that emailed me, inboxed me or whatever either said I was completely wrong or completely right. It’s something that I’ve noticed in our people. Most of us are either all for it or all against it. We don’t always understand that we can love someone and be critical of their actions at the same time.

The standards have changed as to what we expect from our celebrities. When I criticized Jay-Z for attempting to profit from the Occupy movement, people didn’t state disagreement with my position as much as they stated disagreement with my criticizing Jay-Z on anything. I mean, he’s Jay-Z. Isn’t he above it all? Nevermind whether I was right or wrong, it was more like “How dare you question Jay-Z? Don’t you know how rich he is? Don’t you know he’s ‘one of us’?” When I criticized Tyler Perry, it was less about whether or not I had a point, but more like “Don’t you know how much Tyler has done for black people? Don’t you know he has a lifetime pass?”

In my first book and in subsequent works that followed, I was critical of the support of R. Kelly after the whole videotape incident. I just couldn’t understand how we could support someone that had done something so heinous. Allegedly. I was then and am still convinced that if this were some anonymous man on the end of the block, he’d be locked up, had the locals not gotten to him first.

While I believe that some supported R. Kelly because they believed in his innocence, I also believe that most supported him because he was black and they see his success as some sort of victory against a system that seeks to bring black men down. It’s very difficult at times to convince us that every black person that’s accused or convicted of a wrong isn’t a victim of a system. Sometimes, just like any other race, we’re just wrong and there’s nothing else to it. Allegedly.

What often happens in our community is we see any success as success for the people, even if it’s clear that it’s damaging. When we have a successful celebrity do something that doesn’t make sense, we forgive because “they could be doing much worse”. The logic becomes that a record glorifying being the biggest dealer on the block isn’t as damaging to us as actually being the biggest dealer on the block. Records flaunting wealth and never saying a word about education constantly bumping in your ‘hood are not a problem. A record glorifying being a “pimp” supposedly never turns our young men into wannabe pimps. Songs and videos about promiscuity, some even made by the top female artists of the day, supposedly have no affect on our young women. Water under a damaged bridge.

I ran into heat from friends and family because I was and am still critical of Rhianna and the message that she sends to young girls. People can’t understand how I can criticize her after what Chris Brown did to her. They fail to see these as two separate issues. Yes, it was horrific what Chris did to her, but does that give her a free pass to teach our teenaged girls all about sadomasochism? Does that give her a free pass to create a video glorifying drug use and using the alleged Chris Brown incident to promote a record? Why are we so willing to chalk this up to “creativity”? Does what happened to her absolve her from putting forth a more positive image for the young women that follow her?

What’s interesting to me is when Brittany Spears was off her rocker, white parents were outraged. They spoke out. They even said someone should take her children from her, and it was done until she got herself together. In my youth, whites were constantly at Madonna to tone it down. She didn’t listen, but they kept on her. They cared about what she was putting in their children’s ears, in their minds and in front of their eyes. Even MTV banned a video once. She remained successful, but she lost endorsements along the way because people took a stand.

When we have a situation like Rhianna, the black community tends to wanna embrace more than we admonish because we assume that she’s been through enough, through no fault of her own. But I submit to you that just because Chris Brown was a jerk to her one night, it doesn’t mean she should go unchecked while she poisons the minds of the next generation of young girls. Sure, good parenting trumps whatever Rhianna does, but we can’t always use parenting as a reason not to hold our entertainers accountable.

And speaking of Rhianna, you could imagine my Facebook page when I called into question the fact that Jay-Z has allegedly refused to forgive Chris Brown for what he did to her, even as the industry has. Here’s a young man in Chris Brown, though not perfect by any stretch, that has rehabilitated himself. He was given community service for his crime, which included cleaning up highways, and he actually did it all. What celebrity, in this day and age of Lindsay Lohan’s constant parole violations that never ends in jail time, does that? He actually held himself accountable and one of the world’s biggest entertainers, one that refers to his wife as his “bitch” on his latest album, mind you, holds a grudge against him, while managing Rhianna’s career, thus fostering her behavior.

I just kept trying to figure out how a man with Jay-Z’s past, a man that’s benefited so much from a community’s forgiveness, could hold a grudge against anyone. Especially a young man that held himself responsible, never told his side of the story (by many accounts, there was another side to this story) and survived the industry’s attempt to blackball him. From there, I posted this on Facebook: “I understand that Jay-Z is still holding a grudge against Chris Brown. I wonder how he’d feel if Beyonce held a person’s past against them, considering the fact that with Jay’s past as a big time drug dealer, he’s damaged many, many more lives than Chris Brown ever could on that one night”. Yes, even as a Jay-Z fan, I called it like I saw it.

Too often, we turn the criticism into a black/white issue without realizing that it’s just a black issue. We have to be willing to hold ourselves accountable regardless of what another race may think or feel about it. Unfortunately, we’ve decided that we don’t have to make each other better. We’ve decided that our black celebrities only need to hear our voice at the cash register. Some people are reading this right now and thinking that what these people do doesn’t matter as long as they’re gettin’ paid. We don’t feel the need to hold them accountable for what they do. As long as they entertain us, we could care less what else they do to us as a culture. Isn’t that the same thing we criticized whites for in the past, only seeing our entertainment value?

Look at the NBA lockout. We’re critical of NBA ownership, even calling them “plantation owners” and racists, because most of the players in the league are black. Even though we have blacks in power positions in the NBA, including ownership (Michael Jordan, Jay-Z and Will Smith to name a few), we assume that these multimillionaires are being “enslaved” because their team may be owned by a white man that “gets rich off of them”. We fail to look at the facts. If that white man had enough money to buy the team in the first place, he’s not getting rich off these players. He’s already rich and he’ll continue to be rich if they never play another game.

It’s sacrilegious in the black community to suggest that maybe these players are asking for too much and they need to go back to work. I often hear “The players are the league and that’s what fans come to see, so they should get what they're asking for”. This is usually stated by someone that watches games on television. As a season ticket holder for the Detroit Pistons for over 15 years, I can tell you that there’s a lot that goes on in an NBA arena that has nothing to do with the game and everything to do with the casual fan that doesn’t care as much about the game as they do about having a night out with the kids. The arenas are fan friendly. That’s all done by the owners, not the players. They’re not the “slaves” they want you to think they are.

Let’s look at the Presidency. When blacks were critical of President Obama, for some, the thought was that we should never criticize this man considering the historical significance of his being elected. Again, in my eyes, no one is above criticism just because they’re black, and that includes President Obama. It’d be nice if it was always valid, but hey, invalid criticism comes with the job. I didn’t agree with some of the criticisms that Cornell West and Tavis Smiley had of the President, but not because they were black and they never should’ve said anything. It just seemed as if their criticisms were personal and had more to do with Obama not taking every “black issue” to the White House than they did with how he was running the entire country. However, I would never begrudge them their right to speak out as they see fit. I believe in every voice being heard.

I imagine my issues may come from the fact that I come from a time when parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and siblings would criticize you often. The goal was never to bring you down, but to lift you up. If your performance in school was less than you were capable of, people let you know. If you did something to embarrass the family, people called you out. It was all in the name of maintaining standards. We’ve become so selfish as a society and as a people that we only care about our own standards and the hangers on in our inner circle. As blacks, we’re so concerned with status that we’ve forgotten what our status means to our people. We’re so convinced that we’ve arrived that we have no idea that there’s a movement that still needs us.

When we fought for civil rights in the 50’s and the 60’s, we were doing it for all of us. We weren’t just trying to make things better for us as individuals. We were trying to make things better for us as a race. We were in it together. Now that we have “overcome”, we’re in it for self. As long as we have our money, we’re good. But neither talent, financial status or celebrity status excludes one from their responsibilities to the people.

There was a time when we looked to our political and spiritual leaders as inspirations, but now we just find the man with most money and follow. We do so under guise of following the “American dream”, but that dream was never really our dream. I imagine that once we found out that our political and spiritual leaders were human, we looked to other flawed human beings as our saviors. There were rumors that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had an affair. There were rumors that Malcolm X may have had an affair (neither of these rumors were confirmed). Rev. Jesse Jackson had a child outside of his marriage as he was counseling former President Bill Clinton on his extramarital affair, making himself look quite the hypocrite. Bill Cosby, “America’s dad”, had a child outside of his marriage.

Even as some of these icons fell short, their message and their accomplishments remained the same. Yes, it’s hard to listen to a man when he’s telling you to live right and he’s cheating on his wife, but if his message is consistent and you can see the good it what he’s telling you, why not? I guess that’s too much of a leap of faith for some, and I understand that. However, this is why we need to have our own moral compass as well. It’s almost as if we decided that if our leaders showed any immorality, we’d embrace others that embrace immorality. To us, a lapse in judgment is more of a betrayal than consistently poor judgment. We’d rather follow someone that shows us who they are or “keeps it real” than someone that literally may have had that lapse in judgment.

When I look to hold entertainers and leaders accountable in my small little corner of the world, I don’t do it to bring them down. I do it to lift my people up. I don’t claim to be always right, as no one with an opinion is. I’m just stating what I feel. I’m just calling it like I see it. That’s what real is. Holding true to what you believe. By no means am I suggesting that these people aren’t doing the same thing. I’m just suggesting that what’s real to some of these people can be very harmful to the people that they represent.