A look at the integrity of Celebrities
I can’t imagine how it felt to my ancestors standing nearly naked, having been stripped of their clothing, culture, identity, and dignity on the slave auction block in that South Carolina market back in the mid-1800s.
They had no voice in their forced participation in this vile and disgusting bidding war to see who would win the right to dehumanize them further.
The image of my forebears enduring this and other harsh indignities is why I will never allow anyone to place a price tag on my integrity and bid on the soul of my consciousness.
That’s why when I see Knee Grows, who I once admired for their strength and cultural loyalty, taking discounts for the essence of their melanin-coated being, I’m equally saddened and disgusted.
They can rationalize their willingness to participate in the modern-day slave auction ritual and offer flimsy reasoning as to why they opted for mainstream recognition, tolerance over acceptance, and tainted dollars, but as the late pro baseball player Curt Floyd so eloquently opined: “A well-paid slave is still a slave.”
I will never count anyone else’s pocket change nor judge them for what they do but please don’t straddle the fence or play hide and seek with your ethnicity and allegiance to our culture.
You can’t chase a bag when it’s convenient to your financial bottom line and then raise a fist in the air and proclaim your allegiance when they show you how Black you really are.
My list of disgust and disappointment with people who fit this mold grows longer each year. In a 2017 video making the rounds on the World Wide Web, Gangsta rapper Snoop Dogg is looking directly into the camera and issuing a direct threat to lambast anyone who dares perform for the current Racist in Chief.
Evidently, he offered a humanity discount and they met his price at the recent inauguration. This was after NBC had paraded him around the summer Olympics clowning for the cameras.
If you saw the video of all those at the inaugural ball who had bid on him, it was obvious they were unamused and uninterested with the product they purchased.
Rapper Nelly tried to feign a commitment to patriotism as he sold his soul, attributing it to his respect for the office.
I would’ve had more respect for him had he performed for actual soldiers than for a man who has often criticized military members.
My heartbreak and disappointment is not just for those who played Stepin’ Fetchit for the President.
I reserve some of the verbal castigation for the misstep of rapper Sexy Redd, whose MLK Day photo of her in an intimate pose with Dr. King was so shameful and inappropriate, it made me wonder what her price tag was. Who around her said this was a good idea and gave it a green light?
I’m a huge Public Enemy fan, but Flavor Flav is competing with Snoop in the clown for white folks category. There are others like Kanye, Stacey Dash, Candace Owens, and even the late Jim Brown, who’ve all operated under the famous quote, “I’m not Black, I’m OJ,” until America gave them their Knee Grow wake-up call.
I just don’t have a price.
Kenneth L. Hardin is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.
