Jay-Z’s NFL Shenanigans Are Nothing New: Look to Class, Once Again

Jay-Z is a member of the bourgeoisie. He does not feel anything more than superficial, passing affinity with the masses of Black people in this country. In essence, you are not one of his 99 problems. The colonizer that he’s shucking and jiving next to in this picture is closer to him than any regular, working class or lumpen/proletarian black person. Without this knowledge in mind, we will continue to be shocked and feel let down when one of our comprador (sellout) bourgeoisie does things that are detrimental to our interests as a people. Huey said this in Ebony Magazine 50 years ago.

“A part of the black bourgeoisie seems to be committed to developing, or attempting to develop, a form of capitalism within the black community, or the black colony as we call it. As far as the masses are concerned it would merely be trading one master for another. A small group of blacks with control our destiny if this development came to pass. Such a notion is reminiscent of our earlier history when we had blacks slave masters. A small percentage of the blacks owned slaves; they were our first black bourgeoisie. But we have today their spiritual descendants. And just as the earlier black slaveholders fail to alleviate the suffering of their slaves, so today the black capitalists (those few in existence) do nothing to alleviate the suffering of their oppressed black brothers. But in a greater sense, black capitalism is a hoax. Black capitalism is represented as a great step toward black liberation. It isn’t. It is a giant strides away from liberation. No black capitalists can function unless the plays the white man’s game. Worse still, while the black capitalist wants to think he functions on his own terms, he doesn’t. He is always subject to the whims of the white capitalist. The rules of black capitalism, and the limits of black capitalism are set by the white power structure.”

There were no Black people with as much bourgeois pull as Jay-Z in 1969, when Huey said this. “Our” capitalists were the owners of some liquor stores, pastors that made sound investments and always had their hands out for colonizer money, fast food franchisees, and Berry Gordy of Motown. Part of the Nixonian scheme to defang the Black revolutionary movement that was in a period of high tide at this time was to incorporate more Black people into varying strata of the big bourgeoisie and parade them on the pages of Jet Magazine as “examples of us who made it”. Revolution was to be seen as passé, but the aesthetic was to be coopted and used to strengthen our own oppression. So you can have your cake and eat it too. Throw up your fist in the boardroom, or have Clarence Thomas claim that he was being “lynched” during his hearings in which his sexual assault against Anita Hill was mentioned. It’s a farce, and the colonizers hold the strings. Nowadays we have multimillionaire retired athletes like Michael Jordan mocking his own people and Jay-Z conspiring to make yet more money for himself by shacking up with the NFL while Kaepernick remains unemployed. These are promoted as role models for our youth and our community — the line is the old one. “Fuck everybody else, I got mine.” Jay-Z seeks to inspire his pocketbook and the only actionable item he’s concerned about is his wallet.