I’ve grown tired of watching media outlets bring up black people whenever they’re trying to push an agenda.
In today’s environment, when you want to gain political leverage, you find a way to state that something either benefits or hurts black people. Black American plight is the football thrown around from one cause to another; we are conjured up in fights we have nothing to do with.
Take the case of podcaster Joe Rogan. For months, the mainstream media and even members of the executive branch, like Press Secretary Jen Psaki, have been calling for Spotify to censor Rogan for the new great sin of spreading misinformation. Blue-checkmark elitists have even screamed for the Federal Communications Commission to find a way to silence him.
The latest threat to American public safety and democracy is now a comedian with a microphone.
Shrieking “Misinformation!” wasn’t working the way they wanted it to, however, so Rogan’s adversaries moved to the next logical step: manufacturing racial outrage. Since George Floyd’s death, it seems every other week some notable public figure is slandered as a white supremacist or some institution is called culpable in racism.
Someone like Joe Rogan has spent countless hours speaking to thousands of people, and after searching with a fine-tooth comb, his foes fabricated the necessary fury with a collage of clippings in which he says the N-word.
But is this how it’s supposed to work? Isn’t outrage supposed to be naturally occurring and not highly sought after? Why would any organization spend time digging through hours of podcasts to find this? It’s because elites know we’re all on edge when it comes to even a hint of racism, and we’ve lost the ability to have a contextual conversation about the N-word.
The people feigning outrage aren’t doing so because they’re truly offended or believe the majority of black people give a damn what Joe Rogan says or thinks. They feign outrage because even the perception of “black outrage” is valuable in today’s society, and it provides the media establishment more validation to question Spotify’s culpability in giving a platform to this newfound racist.
I’m not arguing that racism doesn’t exist or that some people haven’t experienced discrimination because of course some people have. But I am questioning how we discuss race and if falling in line with the new anti-racism orthodoxy has led to race becoming weaponized for political, social and even corporate change.
The mainstream narrative preaches race essentialism, which ultimately means that a black man like myself has a shared experience with every other black man. It is a determinative viewpoint that typically sees me as a victim in American society, which I am not.
America has its flaws, but the idea that there is this invisible system designed to hold me down not only sounds incredibly conspiratorial but downright defeatist.
Why would someone perpetuate this narrative? Why would an institution broadcast such an absolutist viewpoint to the masses? After many years of thought and discussion about this, I believe I now know the answer to these questions: It’s about social control for profit, notoriety and power.
If someone can persuade a large population of people to view themselves as weak, misfortunate, sensitive and in constant need of help, those people will become vulnerable to manipulation. So when we start to rise up, we are reminded of the ills of slavery. When we start to figure things out, we are reminded that slaves used to be in chains. When we start to rebuild, we are reminded that it could come crumbling down again like Black Wall Street. And we lose our determination.
We are experiencing a plague of saviorism, and many elites have used their self-appointed status as black people’s saviors to use our name in vain. They’re the purveyors of the race-essentialist viewpoint in America, and they make no apologies about it. We are their convenient victims to be manipulated for their personal benefit.
This supposed scandal about Joe Rogan committing the sin of uttering the word that starts with the letter “N” is nothing more than an attempt to make someone like myself emotionally invested in seeing his demise. Many would love it if a melanin army marched to Spotify’s headquarters in a grand protest to deplatform him as if we are the elite’s black foot-soldiers.
Elitists have portrayed us as highly emotional, dumb and highly manipulable, and I for one can’t stand it anymore. I am tired of the media highlighting the rarity and portraying it as a commonality. I am tired of the most powerful black people crying oppression when they don’t get what they want and expecting the average black person to weep for them. Lastly, I am sick and tired of being portrayed as a victim who is readily available to benefit someone else’s cause.
Joe Rogan is not black people’s fight, but we are once again being brought into it.
Adam Coleman is the author of “Black Victim To Black Victor” and founder of Wrong Speak Publishing.