Juneteenth
Juneteenth
It's Juneteenth, and I ask the question: Black Creators, do you know that you're free?
On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, legally ending chattel slavery via the 13th Amendment (save for some loopholes that we won't address right now). However, given the unwillingness of many enslavers to release the people who made them profit, freedom for all of the captive African descendants was delayed two and a half years, until June 19, 1865 - not because the enslaved didn't want change, but because they didn't know the opportunity had arrived.
Many of us felt motivated during last year's civil uprisings to be more than mainline cogs in a Eurocentric machine. But that was then, and this is now. The Black squares are gone. The hashtagging has minimized. We've lowered the picket signs. Now that our cause has ceased to be the front page news of the internet, I ask you again, whom are you waiting on to give you permission to be yourself?
That query desperately needs a response, because without it, we default to a painfully rigged status quo. I'm often reminded in this season that my people continue to be stepping stones for economic success/social capital. If you all only knew how much of the "African"/"BLM"/Fake Woke products and merch are being sold by non-Black companies (ESPECIALLY on Amazon), you would be sick to your stomach. The commodification of the Black struggle has always been big business in America and abroad. Oh, and *spoiler alert*, arguably among our top three exports is our music. More on that later.
You see, it's a known fact in marketing that Black culture makes things cool.
Got an app like Clubhouse, but don't know how to make it blow up? No problem. Get some rappers and comedians on there, and watch it become mainstream. Got a pop star that you want to gain notoriety? Get some video vixens twerking, or a Black choir singing behind them in a video. Instantaneous trending. And we don't even have to start on the whole "Who invents the TikTok dances vs. Who goes viral and gets brand deals out of them" conversation.
Black artists are hired to make other people rich off of our sound and our culture REGULARLY. But there's a less perceived way that we are used by majority culture. One that I think can be the most devastating.
The sneaky tactic of organizations and individuals in power, with a consistent success rate, is to use Black culture to fix bad PR.
Have you said/done something racist recently? Get some happy Black folks in a picture with you. Got a history of poor treatment of Black/POC employees? No worries. Run some ads with an out-of-context "I Have A Dream" speech audio clip. Got an all (or mostly) White church with dominant White culture as the standard? Hire somebody Black to "diversify" in public, while ignoring or punishing their critiques of your toxic culture behind closed doors. (Sidebar: this isn't exclusive to White people either because it's not only about race, it's about power. As a prime recent example, Kanye West did this with "Sunday Service". He killed his image by speaking recklessly, wearing Confederate apparel and MAGA hats. Then he gathered a mass chorale of Black gospel singers, rebranding as a Christian artist...and boom, tours and a GRAMMY.
Black Christians are particularly at risk for this chess move because we have a history of responding to oppression and abuse with forgiveness, as our faith tradition leads us to do. Couple that with the comparative lack of opportunity in the mainstream artists spaces, and we seem to willingly turn a blind eye to obviously racist, controlling, and manipulative environments because they can get us a chance to be heard or seen.
I see this clearly because I have been that all-too-forgiving Black voice in a White room. I gave people the benefit of the doubt when all that their track record proved was that I was little more than a prop to keep things running smoothly. It always bites us in the butt. Five, ten, fifteen years down the line. Then the tell-all interviews and tweet threads come out. But until then, why complain in public? "They" look good, we get exposure. It's a two-for-one special. I'm not naming names, but some of y'all just started to connect the dots on that last part...I hate to burst bubbles, but the truth is the truth.
In the spirit of holding Freedom Day as more than a trendy annual occurrence, here's where I will challenge us moving forward.
Black Creators: stop putting our art, our faces, our branding, our culture, our swag, our images for sale in places with no relational equity. If they want our rhythm, they gotta have our blues too. If they want our dances, they gotta listen to our stories too. If they want our voices on their Christian albums, don't compromise our sound to fit their palette. If they record your songs, boost your streams, but take your publishing, LEAVE.
As for the rest of us: you should be very, very cautious of any media (ESPECIALLY Christian media) that suddenly shows up in high prominence with a bunch of Black people. Real Blackness isn't mainstream enough to be marketable quickly. Our brands take longer to build because we aren't backed easily. We don't even use the same storytelling language when we share our journeys. So to be more blunt, if your favorite Black rapper has mostly White people at their concerts, and if your favorite Black worship music is easily accessible to White churches, as if it might have been tailor made for them...ask where the Black artists are compromising - because they are.
Be sober-minded, follow the money and govern yourselves accordingly. We cannot settle for the satisfaction with seduction of popularity, in exchange for the true restorative justice found in ownership. How many of our artists have gone through this already, finding themselves well-known, yet totally controlled in what they could say, do, or see financial return on? Prince. TLC. Lil' Wayne. So many more - household names, filing for bankruptcy. Famous, and shackled. Surely, we can walk in a different path today.
Here's my heart in all of this: I'm praying for everybody to win. I'm not downplaying the gifting, skill, or success of anybody who might land in the situations that I just brought up. I swear, all I want is for us to win the right way.
I want to see Black artists who shout and dance and protest, win just as much as the Black artists who play guitar and sing over barely any drums. I want to see Black creators who put in the work get endorsements that don't force them to tone down their culture in order to make money. I want to see us donated to, shopped with, reposted, and platformed without national outcry over a dead Black body as the only motivation for the spotlight. I want to see Black entrepreneurs and record executives passing on generational wealth through their companies without having to answer to anybody outside of our culture.
That's freedom. That's our ancestors' wildest dreams. That's emancipation. That's what the true legacy of Juneteenth is about. Happy Freedom Day, friends.
