...About "Appropriate" Entertainment

It felt like Macklemore was the artist of the year my freshman year of high school. Thrift Shop was especially popular, its music video had the crazy fashion and outrageous props. I’d be lying if I said my dorm-mates and I didn’t have a competition to see who had the best remake of it. Can’t Hold Us was also a favorite for its dance-y vibes, and Same Love for its message on gay love. And his music felt timeless; I could still to this day sing along to nearly all of Thrift Shop. I was convinced I was a true fan.

When Dr. Bell asked our class if any of us had heard Macklemore’s song White Privilege II, I thought she had confused the artist. There was a Macklemore song I didn’t know? You mean to say he had other songs besides his three most popular ones? But I wasn’t alone; the majority of our thirty person class hadn’t heard the song before either. Dr. Bell said something along the lines of, “That’s probably because it talked about real things and ultimately ended his music career.” Doc proceeded to play it.

Dr. Bell was not exaggerating: the lyrics of the nine minute song are some of the realest lyrics I’ve ever heard. Its overall message speaks to the unacknowledged and undiscussed privileges of being white in America and how white police are free to take the lives of Black people without punishment and fear of reparation. But the one thing the American dream fails to mention / Is I was many steps ahead to begin with / … /White supremacy is the soil, the foundation, the cement and the flag that flies outside of my home / White supremacy is our country’s lineage, designed for us to be indifferent.

After the song ended, Dr. Bell offered us some final thoughts before taking our break. Macklemore’s choice to use his platform and musical power as a white male in hip hop to shed light on and vocalize the everyday injustices of America that maintain and perpetuate harm and oppression was a revolutionary decision. And it was no accident that many of my classmates and I hadn’t heard that song until class that day. The music industry didn’t want people to hear that song, pop culture didn’t want people to hear that song. Because it challenged the norm – arguably the revolutionary practice we need in America if we ever want to come somewhere close to equality – Macklemore’s song was rejected and his message was silenced. It wasn’t played on the radio. It didn’t pop up in Facebook newsfeeds. It wasn’t performed at a broadcasted music awards show. It was ultimately easier, pop culture decided, to pretend Macklemore’s White Privilege II and the message it communicated didn’t exist than it was to grapple with the unjust realities deeply embedded in white privilege and white supremacy that it was preaching. Pretty disappointing.

And this narrative of choosing what is considered appropriate or digestible entertainment was not unique to the music industry. And that choice can be in the form of silencing powerful voices that communicate revolutionary messages, in the form of using oppressive language towards a local sports star no longer in uniform, or in the form of Instagram likes.

A few days before Dr. Bell brought up White Privilege II, the Boston Celtic’s guard Marcus Smart published an article in The Players’ Tribune called “This Article Is Not About Basketball.” Smart starts the article talking about COVID-19 and the shutdown of the league. Five days before the season stopped, the Celtics played the Utah Jazz (which had the first NBA player to test positive for COVID-19) of the Utah Jazz and his girlfriend threw him a surprise birthday party. So, between the game and the party, it was unsurprising when Smart tested positive. After he recovered, Smart was excited about to help with blood and plasma donations, as well as his advocacy. He quickly learned, as did the rest of America, people of color were being hit hardest by the virus. That in combination with peaceful protests for George Floyd’s death and demand for racial justice showed Smart he was living during a pivotal moment in history. He writes, “Here we are out here standing up for our rights, and at the same time there’s a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic out here killing Black and brown people at higher rates than everyone else.” Smart proceeded to reflect on his life long experience with discrimination and racial profiling, dating back to when sales people followed him around in stores in Texas while he was growing up, to being pulled over in his Range Rover by cops who interrogated him about how he could afford his type of car, to a recent encounter with a Celtics fan after a game, the last of which, he wrote, had the biggest impact on him.

Smart was pulling out of the Garden’s parking lot when a white woman and her five- or six-year old son were crossing the street as cars approached them from a recently red-turned-green light. Afraid something bad was going to happen, Smart yelled out of his window to tell them to hurry as to avoid any injury or accident. The mom was wearing an Isaiah Thomas jersey and was surrounded by fans who had also been at the game; he “figured she’d be cool.” Wrong. The mother swung her head around to cuss him out, calling him the n-word. Smart writes, “And in an instant, just like that, I was made to feel less than human. I wasn’t a person to this woman. I was a form of entertainment. Nothing more. And, believe me, it took every ounce of restraint in my body not to curse her out.” For the rest of the article Smart focused on the woman’s son: her using that language in front of her child was a direct example of how someone is taught racism, not born with it. But it is the kids, Smart concludes, that give him hope for this country and its future.

After class ended, I texted my brother and his girlfriend in our group chat. “Have either of you heard Macklemore’s song White Privilege II? Listen to it! It was made in 2016 and basically ended his career.” The next morning, his girlfriend responded: “The power of white supremacy! To reinforce white supremacy! And the difference between white people acknowledging black people struggling is okay but white people acknowledging their own privilege…weeeellll.”

“It’s the same idea with this article by Marcus Smart!” My brother was the reason I loved basketball, so I knew this would be of interest to them. “As soon as he is removed from the NBA entertainment platform and the Celtics court, his own fans see him for the color of his skin and the color of his skin only.”

Ultimately curious about the ways in which this selective entertainment manifested itself, I started looking at the Instagram posts of various Celtics players who had posted about racial justice issues. Marcus Smart was the first that came to mind. A picture of him and his four teammates after beating the Toronto Raptors in the Eastern Conference semifinals got over 141,000 likes, but an earlier swipe post of him wearing Black Lives Matter apparel only go 28,500 likes. The post that plugged his article got just upwards of 41,500 likes. I next went to Jaylen Brown’s account, a Celtics player who is known for his leadership on the NBA’s social justice plan. His post with his 7-foot-5-inch tall teammate Tacko Fall reaching over him for a rebound in a game got over 120,000 likes, but a post of him and his teammates kneeling before a game during the National Anthem with the caption “Black Lives Matter” got just above 51,000 likes. I didn’t even look at what the comments said. It was clear to me that these discrepancies were not separate from their subject matters; people decided what entertainment was worthy of their attention, and that entertainment rarely seemed to challenge the injustices experienced by black people living in a world centered around maintaining and perpetuating white privilege.

My dad sends out a newsletters for his work probably twice every six weeks. He is a loan officer so his letter includes a section on the economy and a section on mortgages. He also loves fun facts – one year he spent ten minutes during a Thanksgiving toast telling the table about the population statistics of turkeys over the past few decades – so there is an “other” section. My dad is also really into music – think Dead head energy – and so he wraps up his newsletter with links of three to four different YouTube videos.

It’s hard to describe my dad, but he’s the kind of guy everyone loves. He is the loudest guy in the room, but he is also a good listener. He never forgets a birthday. You can hear his laugh from aisles away in a grocery store. He loves taking friends to concerts, and our family to sporting events. All of this is to say that it is no surprise he has a long of friends and clients he sends this newsletter to, and who read it. I know that because he always comes home after the morning he sends it out with a report on of various feedback. Most have to do with the “other” section and the music videos.

So, a few days after I first heard Macklemore’s White Privilege II, read Marcus Smart’s articles, and talked to my brother and his girlfriend about the trend in the media to silence voices that challenge the dominant white narrative, it dawned on me that my dad’s newsletter could be a good platform to share either the song or Smart’s article. His other section could include the article, and the song could be one of the YouTube links. So, I went downstairs to dinner and relayed the same facts and realizations I had come across to my parents. It felt like I was talking at a rate of million words per minute, but they seemed to get my message.

“Both are good options,” my dad concluded. This was a step up from earlier in the summer when I suggested he write a statement regarding #BlackLivesMatter in his letter, to which he said he wasn’t sure it was the right platform to do that on, specifically because his letter was independent of his employer. Definitely not my favorite excuse, but also didn’t deter me from continuing to make content suggestions.

Anyways. The next newsletter has yet to be sent, but I'm waiting for it (somewhat) patiently, crossing my fingers for some revolutionary content.