Janet Jackson’s team has denied issuing an apology for her remarks claiming Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is “not Black.”
A rep for the “All For You” songstress told People Sunday evening that an earlier statement shared by Mo Elmasri, who claimed to be Jackson’s manager, was unauthorized.
Her rep told the outlet that Elmasri is not the singer’s manager, nor does that person represent her in any capacity. Randy Jackson is her manager.
Elmasri claimed in the unapproved statement that Janet was apologizing for her comments on Harris’ racial identity, which were “based on misinformation.”
The “Feedback” hitmaker, 58, came under scrutiny after questioning Harris’ race during an interview with the Guardian published on Saturday.
When the pop star was asked about her thoughts on Americans voting for the first Black female presidential nominee, Janet said of Harris, “She’s not black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian.”
Janet is a pretty liberal black woman - made her appearance back on RuPaul’s drag race back in like Season 3 or something, which I believe was before The Straights were head over heels into it.
I think she’s actually voicing something that elements of the black community have felt for a long time: there are people getting credit for blackness without being authentically black, which is why wealthy African transplants to the US without real authentic African American roots are sometimes also treated like a sort of outsider (and vice versa).
I do not think it’s so different from working class white people criticizing weatlhy white people who pose as working class…
It’s actually quite in line with a lot of Critical Theory: race is a social construct, and thus things like Whiteness and Blackness are defined by the lived realities and the perceptions of all manner of people.
If this was the year 2009 and we were talking about a half-Jamaican, half-Indian district attorney in San Francisco whose father and mother were both academics and who grew up in Canada attending a private school and black people were criticizing her for capitalizing off of her bloodline but not being authentically black, there would be zero controversy here.
The problem is that a black woman is criticizing a candidate who is half black by blood and needs the black vote for the liberal party in a Presidential election… But if she was for the Conservative party? This observation about her would be all anyone talkeda bout on the left.
This, and really your whole comment, comes across like it’s okay for one person to decide another isn’t what they identify as because their experiences were not the same.
Using the social construct argument who is Janet Jackson to say Kamala Harris or anybody else is not black.
Getting some real Dwight Schrute vibes here. Shouldn’t Janet have called Kamala Caucasian?
My position would actually be that Janet Jackson has a right to say this, and I think her position, and the position of other people who have a take on culture, race, its expression, etc., are also interesting.
I assume you have a similar enough position - let Janet talk, and let her be wrong (if you think she is wrong), and I suppose it’s just fun for me to discuss it.