“The Story of OJ” and What White People Won’t Believe About America

Ashley Davis
Jul 25, 2017 · 4 min read

My white co-worker liked “4:44”, but Jay Z’s references to slavery on the track “The Story of OJ” made him “uncomfortable”. To date, that is the best review of the legendary rapper’s masterful thirteenth album I’ve heard.

Still from “The Story of OJ” visual

“Jay Z is a rich guy who was never a slave,” he crossed his arms over his chest in self-satisfied white man indigence. “He should stick to rapping about selling drugs.” I felt my eyebrows fly into my hairline in an expression of disbelief. Then I struggled to hold in a laugh at such an uninformed, and WILDLY RACIST statement.

In 2017, Sean “Jay Z” Carter is a self-made business magnate worth $800 million. He was raised in a housing project in Brooklyn, with no father, but now controls successful business interests in real estate, sports management, and a venture capital firm. He produces Ace of Spades and Armand di Brignac ultra premium champagnes, bought a music streaming app and increased its value 6x in 2 years. He has been inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame and is part owner of an NBA franchise. He’s friends with Oprah and President Obama. He’s married to, and has three children with, the most famous woman on the planet. He’s famous for spitting his verses in one take, off the top of his head. Two weeks ago, this brilliant mind released an album speaking to a generation of Black Americans about business ownership, wealth building, fatherhood, fidelity, family, and racism… but the white boy at my job wants him to “get back to rapping about selling drugs”.

I was burning with anger. White people in America have a long history of demanding that Black entertainers and athletes just “shut up and dance”. Every Black celebrity who has used their platform to criticize the oppression of Black people in America faces those demands. From Muhammad Ali in the 1960s, to Colin Kaepernick in 2016. In 2017, NBA star Lebron James’ home was vandalized with racial slurs. He faced weeks of ridicule for stating the obvious “no matter how much money you have… being Black in America is tough”. White sports fans criticized his statements for weeks, accusing him of “whining”. The predominant attitude being: ‘he’s rich, MLK cured racism back in 1964, what’s he mad about?’

White people might own all your albums, wear your jersey in every color, and buy tickets to all your movies. Dare to discuss how Black people face a systematic oppression that has been intentionally created and maintained in the United States, and you better be ready to throw hands. White Americans both idolize and idealize the idea of America as a great land of justice and equal opportunity, they aggressively reject any information to the contrary. When successful and prominent Black people from Barack Obama, Chris Rock, and LeBron James, and others have talked about the racist treatment they experience in this country, whites that have no experience outside of their own, will argue to their death about how the aggrieved Black celebrity is “exaggerating” or “race baiting”. White people in the United States have a religious allegiance to the idealized dream of America. Five centuries of evidence proving that the dream is a pure fairy tale is simply ignored or dismissed at every turn-: “Why do you have to make everything about race?”

No word yet on whether my white co-worker was “uncomfortable” with the police gunning down twelve year old Tamir Rice in a public park, unarmed father Eric Garner being choked to death by six NYPD officers, or the mountains of research that proves so many American institutions systmeically act with bias against Black citizens.

My co-worker was “disappointed” that Jigga chose to rap “Rich nigga, poor nigga/ House nigga, field nigga/ Still nigga”. He continued, “Why doesn’t he talk about something he knows?”. The irony that he is a white guy born and raised in Utah (Black population 1.4%), critiquing how a Black man speaks about his own experiences, apparently didn’t register. He is apparently unaware of the many generational pass-throughs of chattel enslavement, and it’s lasting impact on the US justice system and policing, as well as access to education, housing, employment, and even food and clean water which create the Jay Z was referencing in the verses. He wouldn’t want to hear it anyway.

Ashley Davis is writes about “Self improvement for Loners” at SolitaryBeast.com

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