Jay-Z... again
Jay-Z’s partnership with the NFL announced its first steps toward social justice change. It’s groundbreaking, never been done before… Just kidding, the big announcement is a free concert and some apparel for you to buy. People were all over twitter mad about Meghan Trainor, but I like Meghan, because I’m all about that bass, ‘bout that bass no treble, but I digress. I am more perturbed by soooooooooooo many other things.
The NFL has a foundation for charitable contributions and since 1973 the foundation has contributed nearly $553 million to charities. This money comes from ticket prices, merchandise purchases and player fines. In addition, each individual NFL club has their own charitable foundations. They decide who they are going to give too and how much. In January Inspire Change a new platform was launched, this is a matching grant fund, it will match the donation of individual payers to social justice initiatives in their communities. I am not turning my nose up at this attempt by the NFL to impact change. I said all of that to say this, the NFL gives money where they want to give money. The partnership with Jay-Z isn’t about the NFL giving money to social justice causes it is about using a black celebrity to influence black people to forget about kneeling or the blackballing of Colin Kaepernick so they can make a profit. It’s a win/win or should I say profit/profit for all.
As I peel back the layers, I realized this deal was set in motion at the Superbowl when Jay-Z called Travis Scott about his performance. Everybody assumed it was to convince him not to perform but Travis Scott performed under one condition, his money go to the charity of his choosing. The charity of his choosing was Van Jones’ Dream Corp charity who is managed by none other than Roc Nation. This is not to discount the work Van is doing for criminal justice reform, but Jay-Z is behind the scenes capitalizing off a social justice movement.
Jay-Z is super shady. Who profits off social justice movements? This, in my opinion, makes Jay-Z duplicitous. Is he giving back to social justice causes, yes, comma but... is it a zero-sum game? Is he giving back an equal sum to his profit or is he using social justice as another way to make money and deceiving others about his motivation or worse selling out the culture and the cause for profit. If you want to give money to your community, you are better off writing a check and sending it to the charity than you are paying the marked-up price of a t-shirt Jay is selling. If you send the money to Jay-Z a piece of it goes to production, Roc Nation and then your charity. Why split the money 3 ways when you can send the funds directly to the charity unless you want the t-shirt, than go ahead split the donation three ways, the charity didn’t need the full amount anyway. No really, they only need 1/3 of your donation.
Jay-Z is hijacking the social justice movement that Colin Kaepernick started to shed light on police brutality to make a profit and to add insult to injury, some time back in January Jay-Z was at a Van Jones event and during a panel discussion he blamed police brutality on single parent households. His exact words were:
“growing up in a single parent house causes people to have an adverse feeling toward authority which causes them to tell police “f*ck you” resulting in interactions that “causes people to lose lives.”
Does Jay-Z have a case of affluenza, is he so far removed by wealth that he simply cannot remember the over policing, over charging and systemic racism inherent in the criminal justice system? Is he playing chess and trying to rock the NFL owners to sleep to buy a football team. Truth is I don’t know.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care that Jay-Z is making money and securing generational wealth for his family. I am also not about cancel culture, but you do you boo. I am mad, BIG mad about him using the problems of the community and social justice as a means to an end while using white supremacist talking points, seriously the SAME talking points of Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson and Tomi Lahren. I am trying super hard to not be judgmental because like I said I am a fan of Jay-Z’s music, but Jay-Z is making me want to square up.
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