Nick Cannon is in the hot-seat today after being dropped by ViacomCBS for making “Anti-Semitic” comments during his June 23rd episode of Cannon’s Class with former Public Enemy member Richard Griffin aka Professor Griff. This is not Cannon first ousting from public media as he had a similar dump a few years back when he left America’s Got Talent.
Now ya’ll know good and damn well I believe half of what’s reported, and even less of what I see. so I took 90 mins of my life to sit through the interview to get a picture of what the hell Cannon done said now.
Here’s a look at some of it for yourself:
Nick Cannon says white people are “a little less,” “closer to animals,” “the true savages,” “acting out of a deficiency so the only way they can act is evil.” When does he get canceled? pic.twitter.com/vK3TBDW9i8
— Adam Ford (@Adam4d) July 14, 2020
One of the things I appreciate about Nick Cannon is that he is true to himself. As he’s done the work on educating himself and changing how he dresses, thinks and speaks to reveal more of the real him. I also can’t deny the fact that his ground breaking Wild N’ Out brand has given opportunity to many underground comedians of all racial creeds that they probably wouldn’t have gotten on outlets like Saturday Night Live.
I also apprecciate his devotion and dedication to working with incarcerated brothers, and the fact that his beautiful Black ass was all over the interwebz during the social protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the growing list of names (including Breonna Taylor #SayHerName) of unarmed Black people being murdered by officers of the law with impunity.
But listening to this interview took me back to my time in a little sect of society known as the Secured Party Movement. For those of you unfamiliar, it’s a contingent of society that offers a heady mix of truth, fiction, conspiracy and sci-fi all in the form of “hidden truths”, secret movie messages and hour-plus long youtube video and blog posts. You can usually spot this sect by use of terms like “overstand”, claiming godhood, mentioning the Illuminati, Jekyll Island and many other things that mark the Conscious community less than affectionately as Hoteps.
I can’t say everything Hoteps spit is false. A lot of the things they say make sense and serve as logical explanations for a fucked up society where your people are being murdered, fed into the school to prison pipeline, ostracized for speaking out on certain practices and just plain treated like shit. In fact I owe my ability to think like Richard Feynman, Elon Musk and Albert Einstein, to these men. They taught me how to look for patterns in history, in speeches, in movies. They taught me how to cross evaluate and look for the root meaning of words. And honestly that gave me the ability to think across subjects and find connections that I would not have developed under any other circumstances.
But there is a dangerous root in the midst of it all and it comes around half way through the interview (starting around minute 40 or so) that irked not only my soul but brought to light a fear rooted in the same reason I don’t fuck with Farrakhan like that.
Nick starts spewing knowledge about the origins of white people and how the lack of melanin made them less. His exact words were far more carefully selected as I think even he realized on some level what he was saying could be misconstrued in some way. But it wasn’t. In one sentence he manages to undercut the premise of the interview by saying that the absence of something dictated by genetics automatically made a person less, animalistic and violent in nature. Which sounds eerily familiar to the premise behind D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation.
I’ve had my fair share of experience with white people and had the dissatisfaction of being yelled at by my fair share of Karen’s (of all races) for 4 years working in a call center. And I can definitely tell you that supporting ideas behind oppression and thinking in social hierachies and survival is not unique to the presence or absence of melanin.
Look at R.Kelly. Bill Cosby. Bishop Eddie Long. They had no less melanin than Griff or Cannon, but found a way to abuse power and privilege in a manner that many people were unaware of until a few brave souls began to speak out. Just as with Weinstein, Trump, Epstein and other powerful white males with privilege and power. Melanin did not save those monsters from being the monsters that they are. Because power corrupts and absolute power…
Nick and the Esteemed Professor need to do some careful examination of their thinking because they sound a whole lot like them white Nationalists on Breitbart and Fox News. Even down to the defense of “I am not speaking hate, just speaking truth about the natural order of things.”
And I bet chu ANNNNNNNNNNNNYYYYYYY money that the reason that my people are going to cite for Nick losing his role at ViacomCBS is cause he’s Black or was trying to buy it.
This defense allows toxic thinking to continue uncorrected. Nick already said he ain’t apologizing.
Here’s Nick Cannon’s Statement:
But that line of thinking is just as dangerous as these white boys on 4chan prepping for civil war with Grand Wizard Trump leading the fucking charge. That disdain for Otherness. It means if I don’t align with the natural order of things that they see fit then I’ll be deemed a problem by them too, melanin or not. And we’ve seen this in the conscious community a lot. Every thing from blatant misogyny to thinking there is a gay or trans agenda in them wanting to be represented in media and so on and so on. Now these gentlemen didn’t explicitly say those things, but as someone who spent years in the community, I can take a wild guess and say there a 75% chance if you sat and spoke with them individually one of those pieces of rhetoric will pop up. Because let’s face it, white people aren’t the only toxic ones in this society.
So to Cannon and Griff, I, as a black woman appreciate the basis of what it is you are trying to do in educating the community about their history and building them up in a society that seeks to tear them down. But, if your fundamental assumption is that because you were born a certain way you are better, or because you are descended from the Original man you are better, then my brothers you are no different from the oppressors you seek to liberate us from. And I ain’t trying to replace one set of chains with another, not when I’m the god you claim I am. Y’all better course correct before it’s too late.
I know I had to and I still am. And if I the queen of consciousness can do it. So can yall.
Period.
Image Credit: Getty Images North America Noam Galai / Contributor
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