*On a recent episode of the Higher Learning podcast, Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay were having a conversation when Van joked that Erika Kirk has a coming Netflix stand-up special. Laughter ensued about the new face of Turning Point coming out on stages with pyrotechnics and the possibility of Nicki Minaj opening for the imaginary Netflix special.
Van goes on to call the Far Right’s entertainment posse of singing and rapping marionettes members of the Chitlin’ Circuit. It was a poignant capture of what we’ve all been witnessing. It’s more than a sell-out moment for many of these folk.
It’s something more salient and deplorable than the term sell out could inculcate. Rather, this persistent appearance of Black celebrity on the wrong side of history accurately forecasted what I think many of us didn’t anticipate because we were so caught up in the initial shame and disappointment of it all.
These Chitlin’ Circuit entertainers produced propaganda much like Hitler’s Nazis produced propaganda to promote, influence, and entertain the masses with their messages. These Chitlin’ Circuit entertainers (which include Nelly and Snoop Dogg) are not only complicit in the rise of fascism, but have cleared a red carpet for its installation.
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It’s a wonder how we’ve managed to press on without a bit more outrage for this level of betrayal. I’m not sure we’ve fully processed as a community that we have pedestaled these entertainers over the decades and given them the validation required to reach such a status and nostalgia.
We had these expectations around who they are and how they are supposed to be, and accepted them, expecting their loyalty to our interests. They were a part of us. But what this era of tyranny, rage, and violence flowing down from the current administration has exposed is a shocking level of self-preservation and lack of consciousness or lack of care or loyalty among the people we used to love.
They’ve given themselves over to be utilized for their celebrity and their blackness, which never belonged in the imagination of the Far Right except to establish difference and unsubstantial ideals.
These Black celebrities have used their identities as weapons to uphold the racist, capitalistic, hetero-patriarchal ideals of the Far Right. Whether or not these celebrities have entered politics in this capacity has been driven by survival reasons, or because they were always disloyal to the people who supported them, or because they justified their participation with a bloodied check – is all unclear. However, their actions definitely speak volumes.
In my meditation on this topic, I’ve wondered if maybe there is an empathic lens I could view these Chitlin’ Circuit performers who are possibly in a liminal space where their celebrity is no longer potent, and possibly their money is not matching what they’re used to or there’s some fragility around their existence that has caused this level of desperation that would inspire them to align themselves with the vitriol and terrorism of a political faction so violent and cruel. Maybe they see themselves as vulnerable. There is no justification, however.
The latest wave of ICE agents hired under the Trump administration is like this group of canceled (or should be canceled) Black celebrities. The administration capitalizes on the desperation and tremendous lack many Americans are experiencing – lack of employability, education, economic promise, validation, and power.
These new agents are socially vulnerable people, convinced that joining the oppressor is the best way to remove this vulnerability, obtain validation, and secure importance. Power. They’ve chosen that it is in their best self-interest to become enforcers of illegitimate policies and ideals to position themselves where they had no belonging before. They’ve bottled their rage and their justified reasoning into a unit of domestic terrorists, betraying their communities and the people that suffered alongside them for so long.
The Far Right is using fear, violence, and terrorism to establish a precedent of dominance and demonstrating through their ability to capitalize on the weaknesses of the oppressed, the forgotten, and the othered to mobilize its campaign. We are getting a clear picture of what it looks like to be insubordinate to this regime. And it looks like the Chitlin’ Circuit performers alongside ICE agents must believe the farce that they’ve been cloaked in immunity by becoming a part of the Far Right. But they can’t be immune. They don’t belong.
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