(ThyBlackMan.com) The streets are buzzing about Jay-Z’s latest album 4:44, and in particular the music video for the track “The Story of O.J.” I viewed it. I admit my first impression was that it was dope. I grew up listening to Jay-Z and intently followed, like millions of other fans of hip-hop, his rise to superstardom. I love powerful, artistic images, especially when those images are coupled with an equally powerful analysis of the human condition. On the surface the lyrics of the song seemed to be one of warning black listeners against frivolous spending and materialism with a sprinkling of black group economics. According to Jay-Z’s thinking, these two points are paramount for blacks to embrace because we “still niggas” to these white people, and spending all your dough on consumption will only leave you broke and destitute. While I agree with the latter concerning conspicuous consumption or flat-out waste, I don’t give a damn about the former nor should any other racial minority. What white people think shouldn’t be the catalyst for black self-determination.
The animated images in the video, which include slaves on auction blocks, KKK members rolling off conveyer belts, burning crosses, sambos picking cotton, tricks and prostitutes, as if right out of an early 20th century Disney movie, and equally as exploitative, portrayed all of the black characters engaging in either subjugation
or servitude, entertainment or vice. I couldn’t help but think the images were a re-baptism of sorts for kids across the globe in white supremacist notions of racial hierarchy; hammered firmly in place every minute or so by the song’s hook that catalogues all the types of niggas black people presumably are. After my third viewing I began to wonder whether I’d want the impressionable youth I love watching such a mix of powerful imagery and racist messages.
Jay-Z is one of the most successful black musicians and businesspersons alive. His record sales and awards for his contributions to hip-hop and the recording arts surpass nearly all of his peers, certainly all his peers in hip-hop. His work in music and business places him in the status of iconoclast. But do we need Jay-Z telling black boys that no matter their gifts and talents, hard work, leadership qualities, and ambitions, they’re still just niggas? I’m all for telling it like it is, but using millions of dollars to reinforce racist white beliefs to black kids isn’t telling it like it is, it’s repeating a lie.
Who benefits from Jay-Z’s tacit recommendation to black men to “play the corner” like “Jaybo” as a hyper-macho field nigga? I was under the impression we needed less hyper-macho field niggas not more. When have hyper-macho field niggas ever helped black people? It seems even the reformed hyper-macho field niggas who become successful beyond their wildest dreams still can’t recognize the difference between fantasy and reality, death and life. My cousin LaDonna lives in urban Chicago, I think she and many of her neighbors would agree we need less savages on the street, not more.
I know Malcolm X (R.I.P.) rolls in his grave every time a black celebrity misuses his powerful analogy about house negroes and field negroes– yet again. If “Jaybo” was anything like the field negro Malcolm described, an individual who clearly knew who his enemy was, his solution to white supremacy wouldn’t be to “buy the block” to wash illegal drug profits to fund hood philanthropy (Shawn Carter does know Malcolm Little went to prison behind this type of sloppy thinking right?), instead, it would be empowering black children and young adults to believe they can rise above the muck of miseries attended upon them by racist white institutions. It’d be creating new educational systems to educate black children, and funding business incubators for black creativity, social cohesion, skepticism, free thought, and most importantly, economic and political enfranchisement for black Americans.
Black celebrities love appropriating Malcolm’s words and image for their political or financial gain, but stars like Jay-Z could do much more for the advancement of blacks if he applied the principles that fortified Malcolm’s arguments for self-determination rather than continuing to internalize and perpetuate the worst justifications for black misery. While Malcolm advocated for blacks to critically think about their collective position in American society, in order to pinpoint the major roadblocks to black progress, Jay-Z thinks the biggest enemy to black progress is black people’s credit scores and spending habits. Oh, and strippers.
In an ironic twist the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish civil rights organization, issued a statement denouncing “The Story of O.J.” because of Jay-Z’s lyric claming “Jews own all the property”:
“The idea that Jews ‘own all the property’ in this country and have used credit to financially get ahead are odious and false. Yet, such notions have lingered in society for decades, and we are concerned that this lyric could feed into preconceived notions about Jews and alleged Jewish ‘control’ of the banks and finance.”
Before I address the main point on the ADL’s statement, I think it’s instructive to note that while Jay-Z is making music videos portraying modern blacks as if conjured from the imaginations of white racists of bygone eras, complete with lyrics and images which give the impression that the status of blacks in America remains unchanged since chattel slavery, Jewish organizations are moving in solidarity to combat even the slightest notion that Jews possess concentrated wealth, as if that were a bad thing, because it plays into anti-Semitic stereotypes. This demonstrates the power of well-funded institutions existing to protect all members of a particular ethnic and/ or religious community. Why isn’t Jay-Z funding similar efforts in his own community if he sincerely wants to improve his races position in society?
And while Jay-Z is comparing the poverty of blacks to Jewish wealth, why doesn’t he tell the whole truth about how Jews were able to acquire all that property and wealth? He’s from Brooklyn, I refuse to believe he’s in the dark as to how the project housing where he lived as a youth, Marcy Projects, came to be, and who benefited the most from its existence. To those who accuse me of hating, I know, I know, he and Bey bailed blacks out of jail. True. But bailing black people out of jail after they’ve already been entangled in the system is like throwing a teaspoon of water at a raging inferno. I don’t recall reading that the Carter’s sprung for lawyer’s fees for those looking at criminal trials either. I’m not one to count another’s paper, but if Jay-Z is going to create accusatory art for the masses I think it’s only right we analyze his own contributions to the community that produced him.
My only contention with the ADL is that nowhere in their statement calling out potential anti-semitism, nor in any prior statement, to my knowledge, admits the obvious: Jews have often economically benefited from the systematic social and economic oppression of others, especially black people. Largely owing to their white skin and America’s victory against Nazi Germany. This history of exploitation is the biggest contributor to the stereotypes about Jews and money. If the ADL wishes to shatter the perception of Jewish property wealth it can start with at least admitting their own complicity in the matter, and recognize black opinions concerning Jewish wealth is not anti-Semitic, but a point of view informed by the disproportionate exploitation generations of blacks suffered in the 1940’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s when the federal government endorsed racist property covenants and redlining, confining blacks to unlivable ghettos owned by whites, and eventually pushed still further into public housing redevelopments. All as white property owners, including Jewish property owners, cashed in from newly gentrified urban corridors all over the country.
I wish Jay-Z had been more focused with his retelling of this important history of wealth accumulation by the Jewish community. But lets make one thing clear, all Jews do not own property nor do a majority of Jews own all the property in this country, but for those in the Jewish community who do possess wealth, it is more often than not generational wealth, owing largely to racist federal policies not the frugality of the Jewish community nor the spending habits of poor blacks, as Jay-Z conflates. This history the ADL should own, publicly, while working with the communities of former exploit to assist the hundreds of thousands of black children who were bequeathed not wealth, nor property, only their parents’ position in the ghetto.
Some may say I’ve mistaken the message Jay-Z intended to convey with this record, and that he is not at all telling black people who or what they are, but rather what many whites perceive and believe them to be. One question: How many black citizens of America don’t know what the white majority thinks about them? Donald Trump resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. – in 2017. Nuff said.
We should never confuse the perceptions of those who hate us with the prospectus of our own potential. The perceptions of white people should have no bearing on how we choose to view ourselves. In 1963 author, activist and teacher, James Baldwin understood this truth so profoundly he decided to record it for posterity in a letter to his nephew entitled, My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation. Baldwin writes, “You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger.”
This is a truth all black people would do well to adopt, including Jay-Z.
Staff Writer; Timothy Dwight Smith
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