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August 03, 2003
Is Rush My Baby Daddy?
There's a lot of political blather out there in the world to find fault with. Here's an example of some that yanked my chain today. Let's leave aside the presumption that Russell Simmons is a 'black leader', but deal with the implications of the following para:
Russell Simmons, Inc. has reaped enormous profits from the new generation of Blacks through his position and salary as Chairman of Def Jam Records and Vice Chairman of GlobalHue Advertising Agency, Rush Communications, Phat Farm Fashions, Baby Phat, Rush Visa, Simmons- Latham Media and other capitalist ventures. He has aligned himself with the corporate class and works in their political and economic interest. More often than not, these interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the majority of Black people.
Whatever one makes of Simmons as a cultural or political visionary, he clearly is a shrewd entrepreneur. He exemplifies, better than anyone I can think of at the moment, genuine black capitalism, as contrasted with blacface capitalism or ujamaa.
A Small Refresher
Blackface capitalism would be Revlon through their 'Dark & Lovely' product line. White owned and controlled but strictly for the benefit of black consumers. Ujamaa is small time, cooperative economics. It means going to the black owned barbershop instead of Supercuts. Black capitalism is best exemplified by some of the black owned and operated car dealerships in Atlanta that I hear on the black radio station with black voices using black vernacular to attract black customers.
My position is that they are all good but black capitalism is best. I would add that there is a fourth, which is 'invisiblack' capitalism in which black controlled corporations provide goods and services to the mainstream in which the race of the management team is black but unknown and materially irrelevant. American Express, Avis, AOL Time Warner are all run by black men, few people know, it makes no impact on their marketing.
Ajamu suggests that Simmons business survives in spite of, rather than because of black interests. The basis upon which such a suggestion depends is not given, but I have little doubt as to what would come next. It would be a litany of statistics showing the relative retardation of the majority of blackfolks against the majority of whitefolks. Man, that's tired.
Ajamu could do us all a service by redirecting his criticism to what it is that Simmons is producing and where its significance to black culture lays. In other words, start with 36 million African Americans, focus on the 5.32 million (or whatever figure he can prove) that buy from Simmons and then determine whether or not they are getting their money's worth. To suggest that Simmons is a black leader requires us to understand exactly which blacks he is leading, where he is leading them and how faithful they are to his leadership. Of course Russell Simmons is not necessarily working in the interests of black America, because that huge thing called black America isn't necessarily interested in Russell Simmons.
By suggesting that Simmons could be or would be a black leader that the majority of African America ought to pay attention is to put him up for inspection he doesn't deserve or seek. Sure he meets with Pataki or Cuomo. Sure he donates money to youth organizations, but one should not be surprised that he involves himself in politics or charity. This is what most famous multimillionaires do. His agenda is not a public agenda, rather it is the rather straightforward corporate agenda of building a brand and shaking money out of the pockets of consumers who have money to burn and delivering that money to those in his investment club, the shareholders of his various enterprises. Simmons knows how to make money for his people. His people are commercial artists and shareholders, not all of African America. I think he's doing an admirable job so far.
It's quite fine to advance a political agenda. We all have them and various reasons why. But there is no longer a unified, captive audience called Black America available to jump on a political bandwagon. Nor is it reasonable to expect prominent successful black individuals to father our political dreams.
Posted by mbowen at August 3, 2003 10:39 AM
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