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Hattip to BB!

I remember watching Michael Jackson’s skin tone lighten and nose narrow before my very eyes. As I came of age and was told, “The only two things you have to do are be Black and die” I watched MJ challenge on of those conditions … or did he? While many will point to Jackson as the prototypical case of self-hate and embodiment of lack of self awareness, I think Michael was painfully aware of who he was and made that message a continued part of his life’s work. Jackson was unequivocally a child of the Civil Rights movement and a humanist in his approach towards issues of inequality. While folks over look it, he was very much concerned with inequality and saw his stardom as a platform to infuse the political in the popular.

From his humanitarian work on “We are the World” to this treatise on personal and social responsibility “Man in the Mirror” Michael had a subtle way of asking his listeners to draw on commonality to increase human treatment and dignity. While I appreciate MJ’s public project now, I definitely appreciated it much less so in my younger days. When he released Black or White in 1991. While I thought the song was banging, I was becoming more politicized and felt that it did matter whether you were Black or White. The video presented race morphing which made many think about the commonality of humanity, but I saw it as an embracing of a post-racial worldview. This however was never the case for Michael. In my read of his work he desired that race would not carry meaning, but acknowledged it still did.

In his early and mid-career years, MJ remained publicly connected the Civil Rights establishment via his relationship with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. As a child of civil rights he advocated for a multicultural egalitarian world. In his later years, he developed a burgeoning relationship to Islam via his brother Jermaine Jackson and the Nation of Islam via legal support and management. I remember attending the Millions More March rumors floating that Michael was going to come out, perform and publicly announce his reversion to Islam, but this public day never came. MJ’s affiliations to Islam and the NOI undoubtedly lead to a more explicit racial lens which he later used to “call out” Tommy Mottola president of Sony. People wrote off his public outcry as a link in the media weaved “chain of insanity” and Jackson suddenly moved from “humanist” to “race baitor” in the public imagination. Unfortunately, Jackson’s career was already at a low point and his allegations were not taken seriously, but I’ve always wondered what would have happened if the world took MJ’s cry of unfair treatment seriously? What if the King of Pop was able to raise questions of equity within the industry that resulted in different representation, power, and access? Did his invocation of racial injustice invalidate him in the eyes of many who hung on his humanist messages of equality for all?

No matter whether old Michael or young Michael, he should also be remembered for his project of highlighting and challenging inequality of all forms. Even though to many he was considered “racially transcendent” he did not buy into this image. Instead, he used his popularity as platform to the political. Jackson was an amazing artist but his subtle genius around infusing a brand of social justice into his music should also not be forgotten. The media bonanza behind Jackson will soon die down, but I hope his legacy of social justice will not.

Over the past few days, I’ve seen some rather public discussions of the possible (what could happen) and the probable (what will likely happen). There are 2 recent occurrences that made me write this: 1) the Cassie nude photo(s) leak and 2) the Brooks Op-Ed on the Promise Academy. Well, given the folks who read my blog, I’m pretty sure you’ll be expecting a deep discussion of the Promise Academy and schooling, but for now you’ll have to sit through my discussion of Cassie :)  (Promise Academy discussion and high poverty schooling discussion coming in The Possible and the Probable Part Two).

When the pictures of Cassie were “leaked” onto the internet and she offered a public response via twitter and her blog de-emphasizing them. Many on the internet and radio began to chorus like Jay-Z and say, “We don’t believe you, you need more people.” Behind this incredulous response to Cassie was another discussion that I heard stated squarely by Phonte from Little Brother (while Phonte said it, I know a number of brothas have expressed the same sentiment to me many times over). Phonte tweeted, “So next time you hear someone talk about how unfair the industry is for women, look em in the eyes and say THE DEVIL IS A MUTHAFUCKIN LIAR.” He continued on to tweet, “Female singers play the ho role because they want to, not cause they HAVE to. Minnie Riperton aint neva had 2 show a titty for me 2 buy a CD” and “Neither has Chrisette Michele for that matter (for all you “BUT MINNIE’S HEYDAY WAS 30 YEARS AGO” ass niggas).”

So the argument goes, that women “in the industry” don’t have to  “ho themselves out” they make a choice to do it. Now I want to distinguish between a sistah engaging her sexuality on her own terms (or as much of her own terms are possible) and an A&R or label engineering her image to something hyper sexualized and fetishized. The line can be thin, but 9 time out of 10, the industry (in this case music) actively pushes women into the latter.

I know, many are saying, “But wait, they have a choice! It’s not the industry, it’s them.” Duly noted, but all choices are subject to available options.  Phonte points out Minnie Riperton and Chrisette Michelle, whom I both love, are successful (well relatively successful) and that they made it or are making in the industry without exposing themselves. While this is true, the reality is that they are the exception to the rules or norms of the music industry. If you are participating in the mainstream music industry companies want units moved and profits more than they desire “quality” music. As a result, creativity is compromised, images are engineered, and people are shoved into niches for marketing purposes. You can easily see the same tired archetypes and tropes being repeated in Hip-Hop, R&B, and in most genres of music. The idea is “people buy what they know” and essentially if they know these hyper feminine and hyper masculine images, profits will be made so they keep feeding and forcing people into those categories to “make it” in the music industry.

But what about the exceptions? What about the folks who are themselves? The ones who don’t buy-in or sell-out? You know, Minnie Riperton, Chrisette Michelle, Erykah Badu, etc. Yes, there are always exceptions but those exceptions do little to disprove the rule. Remember for every Riperton, Michelle or Badu there are hundreds of women who equally have fought of these hyper-stereotyped images and go double wood (the opposite of double platinum).  Pointing to the exception does not negate the rule. Throughout history of Black America we could point to the exception or  “exceptional negro” and say their advancement indicated the openness of opportunity, but that would be short-sighted.

As others have said, it’s like saying, “Madame CJ Walker was a millionaire in the early 1900s. Which shows Black women can make it in business if they work hard and have their stuff together.” Yes, a Black woman was a millionaire then, but that can tell us little about the lives and experiences that most Black women had. In fact, I doubt that most Black women in the 1900s didn’t have drive, perseverance, and all the other things attributed to Walker as exceptional qualities. Ultimately Walker’s achievements didn’t mean that most Black women wouldn’t be circumscribed to domestic labor where they would accrue pennies in comparision to her millions. It’s like pointing to Barack Obama and saying, “See the Black man can make it out of poverty in America to be President of the United States of America.” Yes, Barack Obama is a phenomenal example and case, but highlighting his life ignores the fact that 50% of Black men in New York City are unemployed. If you keep pointing to the possible, then you will miss the probable and the reality is that most of us live in the probable and are seeking the possible, not the other way around.

Our community is much like a rose garden with millions of roses. When people ask about our garden we pick the most beautiful rose from the healthiest bush and we show it to everyone. We highlight that rose as indicative of our gardening ability and smile to collect accolades. But the sad reality is that the prize rose is only so beautiful because there were so many that grew with it, but did not make it.

We concentrate on the exceptional because it can be too hard acknowledge the probable and the majority of roses that aren’t award winning, aren’t beautiful, and are subject to the harsh conditions of the world. We must be cautious in pointing to the possible and mistaking it for the probable. In the past, many from outside our community did that and we served as a corrective to this faulty logic, today, I hear all too many within our community endorse this same fallacy.

Not your Idlewild?
There has been a little bit of controversy around the movie being set in Idlewild, Ga (a mythical place). A year or so ago I heard about Idlewild, MI and thought that the movie was going to have a special connection to the area. I didn’t particularly have an issue with the name and the setting, which was cool with me, but not with some.

“They take something with such historical significance as Idlewild, take the peripheral aspects of it, and turn it into a shoot-‘em-up, bang-bang minstrel show. It demeans me as an African-American.”

That was the comment of Coy Davis, the director of Whatever Happened to Idlewild. I hear that it’s a good documentary, but I was pretty suprised that he would come out his neck so quickly about the film. There was shooting, but it wasn’t a shoot-em up film. A minstrel show, interesting… there weren’t even any White folks in the movie that I recall. There was the presence of the Black Middle class,decent representations of the juke joint, commentary on the “chitterling circuit”, oh I guess characterizing Black culture in rural areas is minstrely … maybe I missed it. I think it would have been nice to set it in Michigan, but maybe people like Davis’ reaction dissuaded that possibility seriously.

Also, I think the name Idlewild represents the condition of the place. Percival (Andre) was “idle” in his place in the town, while the Church represented a dynamic setting with almost a religious excuberance from its attendees and was often “wild”.

Storyline and Acting
I think the story line was solid. I didn’t expect to have a thriller or many plot twists, instead it was straight forward movie. One where the viewer is encouraged to suspended disbelief. As the film opens the cinematography moves you into the images of old and I felt there (in part) for the time in my seat. I think the script was written close enough to Big Boi and Andre’s characters that I didn’t feel uncomfortable with their acting, even though Faizon Love was a little over the top, but delivered some great quotables.

Time Travellin’
The times that I was taken out of the old occured via the music. If the film made me realize one thing, it is that Andre is a musical genius! I wanted to see how they blended hip-hop music and classic juke joints. I was kind of shocked honestly, most of the music performed in the film were tracks that Outkast had already done, with some very small alterations (i.e. no references to tapes, cds, baby please…). I coudn’t quite figure out why they didn’t remix more stuff or change up the messaging. My best explanation is that they were attempting to challenge our conceptions of time and the fluidity between the juke joint and the hip hop spot. Some of the music meshed seamlessly (Andre’s She Lives in my lap) while other moments felt odd (Big Boi rapping Church into the camera). The fluidity with with they treated time and progress was best represented by Percival’s room and his wall of clocks. Throughout the film I kept thinking of afrofuturism, but that may just be me seeing too much Andre in the film.

My Verdict
Overall I was impressed with the film. It was an ambitious and well executed. Of course there could have been things that were done better, but the overall project was pretty fresh. It’s what Carmen could have been (lol).