(By Michael Eric Dyson, Washington Post, 23 August 2019)
In 1963, Malcolm X, who advocated armed self-defense of black folk in the face of white supremacy, flayed Martin Luther King Jr., who preached nonviolent resistance to social injustice. “The white man pays Rev. Martin Luther King, subsidizes Rev. Martin Luther King, so that Rev. Martin Luther King can continue to teach the Negroes to be defenseless,” Malcolm charged. He was a “modern Uncle Tom.” Elsewhere, Malcolm dubbed King “the best weapon that the white man . . . has ever gotten.”
I remembered
these bitter charges as controversy dogged the announcement this month that Jay-Z’s company,
Roc Nation, had signed a contract with the National Football League to advise
on live music, entertainment and social justice projects. Jay had stood up for
former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. He wore Kaepernick’s jersey while performing on
“Saturday Night Live,” advised other performers to boycott the Super
Bowl halftime show and rapped on 2018’s “Apes---,” “I said no to the Super
Bowl: You need me, I don’t need you/ Every night we in the end zone, tell the
NFL we in stadiums, too.” Now he’s doing business with the organization that
colluded to banish Kaepernick for kneeling during the national anthem to
protest racial injustice. Associated Press sports columnist Paul Newberry
called Jay a “total sellout,” suggesting he’d buried his conscience in
cash. Kaepernick’s lawyer said Jay’s “cold blooded” move “crosses the
intellectual picket line.” Jay’s justification : “I think we’ve moved past
kneeling. I think it’s time for action.”
Kaepernick and
Jay-Z are not the modern-day equivalents of Malcom and King, but those pairs
reflect an eternal tension — the outside agitators who apply pressure and the
inside activators who patrol the halls of power, bringing knowledge and wisdom
— in civil rights and black freedom movements. King worked with the Eisenhower,
Johnson and Kennedy administrations to better conditions for black folk and to
craft civil rights legislation. Jay, for his part, has advocated for social
justice in his music and beyond the stage for more than two decades — by
writing op-eds and creating an organization to lobby for criminal
justice reform; by bailing out Black Lives Matter protesters; by
supplying legal help for black victims of racism; by
creating documentaries about victims like Trayvon Martin and Kalief Browder; and by speaking out about police brutality and racial
injustice.
The choice
between Kaep and Jay, between Malcolm and King, is a false one. We need all of
them, and it is far too early to judge what Jay will make of this opportunity
with the NFL.
Jay’s action fits
into a tradition of social protest, forged by Jesse Jackson, that extends
King’s work: You protest a company — say a shoemaker or an auto dealership —
for its unjust practices; you force those involved to acknowledge their error;
you negotiate for better terms of engagement; you interact with the folk you
once protested in an effort to make progress. In 1996, after several Texaco executives
were taped making racist comments about 1,400 black
employees who had filed a class-action discrimination suit against the company,
Jackson organized a picket protest, then forged connections with Texaco board
members that led to a corporate mea culpa and an out-of-court settlement of
more than $175 million with the company’s black workers.
This reflected a
shift in civil rights strategy from street protests to suite participation.
Jackson leveraged the threat of boycotts and the rhetoric of persuasion to get
more blacks placed on corporate boards, compel banks and major companies
to direct more business to minority-owned contractors, and help integrate more
black and other minority folk into the nation’s economic power base.
It is true that
the NFL did not explicitly acknowledge wrongdoing in Kaepernick’s case, though
the league did settle his grievance lawsuit in February,
suggesting that it recognized his claim of collusion as a real legal threat.
Jay cannot make a team hire Kaepernick, and perhaps Roc Nation could have
refused a contract until Kaepernick got a job, which would have been a just
outcome. But it is also true that social justice doesn’t hinge exclusively on
Kaepernick’s employment. The fact that many team owners support an openly racist president demands an attempt
to grapple with them. And it may be a sign of progress that those same owners
got into business with a rapper who calls President Trump a “superbug.” Jay’s noisy opposition to white nationalism is just
as important as how his partnership may provide the league cover.
Jay did not write
off protest when he said we are “past kneeling.” He simply cast Kaepernick as a
runner in a relay race rather than a boxer fighting alone in the ring. The Players
Coalition, for instance, was founded in 2017 by Philadelphia Eagles safety
Malcolm Jenkins and former receiver Anquan Boldin to tie kneeling to serious
and thoughtful action. It promotes social justice advocacy, education and
distribution of resources on the local, state and federal levels. When it accepted nearly $90 million from the NFL to
advance its agenda in November 2017, then-49ers safety Eric Reid, Kaepernick’s
courageous compatriot, called the thoughtful Jenkins a “sellout” and a
“neocolonialist.”
But consider its
efforts so far. As part of the $89 million that the players got the NFL to
commit over a seven-year period, $8.5 million was allocated in 2018. Players
identified key issues of racial and social inequality
where they thought they could make the biggest impact, including police and
community relations, criminal justice reform, and educational and economic
advancement. Players led the working group that distributed millions to the
Advancement Project, the Center for Policing Equity, the National Juvenile
Defender Center, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, the Campaign for Black Male
Achievement, the Civil Rights Corps and VOTE. After Trump canceled a White House invitation to celebrate
the Eagles’ 2018 Super Bowl victory, Jenkins skipped a traditional news
conference and drew attention with a series of signs clarifying
that player protests weren’t about the national anthem but about social
inequality.
When white
institutions and individuals sincerely ask for help, it is a good thing to
supply it. (That sincerity may be doubted and only later revealed to be
genuine, or the request may begin as insincere but evolve with more contact and
better understanding.) Malcolm X once famously rebuffed a young white student
who tracked him down in New York to ask what she could do to help the cause.
His response took her aback: “Nothing.” It makes for great theater and dramatic
storytelling, but it was the wrong answer.
Things are never
ideal, and systems of white oppression co-opt us all: teachers, leaders,
advocates, athletes, organizers. Look at me. I have spent nearly five decades — in speeches, books, my courses —
advocating for social justice. I also work at Georgetown University, a school
that sold 272 enslaved souls, including children, to bankroll its future. This
is how the world works: All of us have blood on our hands and dirt beneath our
nails, and we can scarcely afford to reject every institution we encounter as
irretrievably tainted.
The charge of
being a sellout, and the instinct to “cancel” people indicted in this way,
often comes full circle. (Malcolm was later deemed a traitor to his cause and
murdered by members of his own group.) The language of betrayal cannot provide
lasting moral satisfaction. Instead, we need a vocabulary of moral
accountability and social responsibility that is nuanced and capacious, giving
us air to breathe and room to grow.
Jay’s deal with
the NFL represents a valid and potentially viable attempt to raise awareness of
injustice to black folk, and to inspire the league to embrace just action for
the black masses. It may fail — and it certainly should not be used to diminish
Kaepernick’s noble, iconic battle — but the effort is not a repudiation of
justice. It is an attempt to make justice real for black folk far beyond the
elite circles in which Jay and Kaepernick travel. Jay-Z, whose résumé is
suffused with activism that cost him money instead of accruing him profit, has
earned the right to try this. Even if Jay stands to make a tidy sum with the
NFL, his history suggests that he has put his money where his ethics are — and
declined to let his capitalist instincts outweigh his ethical imagination.
Alongside scolding, resisting, protesting and cajoling, there is a need for
strategy, planning, listening, learning and moving forward to test the
application of principles embodied by people like Kaepernick.
Jay and
Kaepernick will not be the last civil rights activists who represent different
poles of the movement. This history is rich: King, Rosa Parks, the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Freedom Riders, the Congress of Racial
Equality and a host of other organizations occasionally bickered over methods
and messaging and strategy. Iconic figures got bruised (James Baldwin, iced
from speaking at the 1963 March on Washington, felt wounded but still kept up
the freedom fight), swept aside (Ella Baker didn’t get her due when working
with King’s sexist organization) or minimized (grass-roots activist Fannie Lou
Hamer wasn’t universally applauded by black elites when she lived).
It is not wrong
for Kaepernick to receive every nickel he has earned from Nike and the NFL, or
for Reid and Jenkins to continue to get paid for their talents in the league
they push to do the right thing. And it is hardly wrong for Jay-Z to do well
while doing good. They are all motivated by grand ideals and good ends. Even
Malcolm X, once he freed himself from his earlier narrow views, concluded that
“Dr. King wants the same thing I want — freedom!” So does Colin Kaepernick. So
does Jay-Z. And so should we.
