Justin Timberlake's attachment to the 2016 BET Humanitarian Award winner, Jesse Williams', remarks on the exploitation of Black entertainment continued on Wednesday [June 29], when the pop star's exchange with critics on Twitter was explored by rapper Vic Mensa, on an episode of The Nightly Show. Joining host Larry Wilmore and his Comedy Central panel, Mensa gave his perspective on the backlash against JT, clarifying that he doesn't see anything wrong with Justin co-signing the speech, but does find that Justin solely engages Black matters when they are to his benefit.
“Our problem here is that Justin Timberlake himself, you know, is definitely benefiting from using Black culture for his sound, his dance moves, his dancers and blowing up off of it. But if you roll down Justin Timberlake’s Twitter for the past two years, which I just did, you see nothing that supports Black people when it’s more difficult; when there’s a struggle, you know,” Mensa said. “With everything that’s going on and everybody that’s been killed by police on camera in the last couple of years, there’s no ‘#BlackLivesMatter’, there’s no ‘praying for Baltimore,’ there’s no ‘praying for Flint’, you know, because that’s a dangerous subject for him to touch. And we’re not feeling him being down when it’s beneficial to him and turning a blind eye when it could be dangerous.”
Williams' awards speech captivated millions, setting off a tide of retweets and shares across social media. But it also sparked controversy, with such detractors as conservatives Tomi Lahren and Stacey Dash. The blowback from Justin's reaction to commenters who challenged his perpetuation of so called "cultural appropriation," have been particularly magnified, as media outlets and followers have attempted to wrestle with the rationale of the speech and the fall out to follow. During his Sunday night address before some of the entertainment world's biggest stars, Williams didn't only notate the history of white musicians re-creating Black American rooted art, he made reference to it abandoning Black people after it has been co-opted and commodified.
“This invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying Black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil, black gold,” Williams said. “Ghettoizing and demeaning our creations then stealing them; gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit.”
Source: atlantablackstar.com
