Why is Celebrity a top priority in the black community?
What happens when we learn values outside of the household? When Vietnam PTSD soldiers come home to communities filled with drugs. Black boys go to school for 15 years and can count on one hand how many males teachers they’ve had. Sports arenas receive more funding than inner-city schools. The celebrity becomes a top priority in the black community is what happens.
People think they need validation from online to compensate for the lack of love in their own lives. Celebrity is the white picket fence American dream for the black community. Your school failed you before you failed school. As a result, you dropped out; you left college early for the draft to help your parents pay bills.
All the jobs your parents had to work motivated you, primarily being raised in a single home. Unfortunately, most don’t achieve the American dream, and most college players don’t make the league. Yet those athletically capable feel its a risk worth taking. Athletes often get a pass for bad grades and bring billions of dollars into college football more.
Blacks used sports to showcase their talent against the opposition of whites initially. Indirectly this passive-aggressiveness to defeat white opponents gained fans in black communities. Black fans of black athletes could root for them subconsciously as a way to fight white supremacy. At least internally. For that game and that moment, black people enjoyed a small victory against whites. It was the only area blacks could dominate.
No laws or police brutality could prevent what happened on the field or court. Released is all of the pent up frustration black athletes endured. legally and within the rules on white players because blacks were more “gifted.” Then comes Muhammed Ali.
Ali could talk trash to white America in ways that the average black person couldn’t to their boss or neighbor. Blacks could live through the outspokenness of athletes. Not to mention Ali is an all-time great fighter. Strangely after Ali, Celebrity is a top priority in the black community.
Vietnam is over; the Magic and Bird NBA rivalry saves the league from terrible ratings. And stern signs a tv deal that would change the league forever. This same period would be the most dangerous, violent, drug-abusing time in the black community. Fathers were absent, killed, or sent to jail. But there was Michael Jordan.
Talent-wise, Michael is the Ali of his sport but not when it comes to speaking out against white supremacy. While the black community is at an all-time high doing drugs, so are NBA ratings and rap music. Professional athletes and rappers control and influence black communities but never politics.
Even during Ali’s prime, athletes weren’t the morals gatekeepers of the black community, and rappers didn’t exist. In a nutshell, programming on television became the father’s and moral gatekeepers of households. Mothers were busy working trying to provide a roof, and grandparents couldn’t keep up energetically with their grandchildren.
Yet many doubters disbelieve that there’s a plan for the black community. What more powerful way to enforce the program than to have the enforcer absent from the home? Rap lyrics and Hollywood scripts are dictating our values, leisure time, and more. Not to mention the programs of holidays and American cultural “norms” that affected everyone, not just blacks.
Slavery removed the black community values before we even arrived in America. Entertainment and drugs have just furthered eradicated the glue that barely held our foundation together. As Dr. Joy mentions in her post-traumatic slavery lectures, we never got therapy for slavery.
In conclusion, All of the centuries of pent up trauma traveling through our DNA, it’s no surprise we love entertainment as much as we do. And this is why being a Celebrity is a top priority in the black community.
What are we proving by wanting to be famous? Let us know your thoughts below