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Despite a career-long fascination with (and use of) black pop culture, Justin Timberlake has never done or said anything to prove he's in any way connected to or concerned with black Americans — at least not black Americans who exist outside of the recording studio. He did not defend Janet Jackson when she was unfairly dragged for the exposure of her breast at the Super Bowl in 2004 (even though it was he who exposed it). He has not spoken out about Black Lives Matter. But as a celebrity who's presumably been PR-trained since age 8, Timberlake knows when to cater to the base. So on Sunday night, he tweeted a perfunctory "#inspired" message in response to Jesse Williams's amazing acceptance speech at the BET Awards — a speech that specifically addresses cultural appropriation in its closing: "We're done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us," Williams said. "Burying black people out of sight and out of mind, while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil — black gold."
The Twitter clap-back to Timberlake's tweet was swift.
Timberlake responded in a way that was both unbelievable in its tone-deafness and completely believable in that Timberlake is a white man who has never acknowledged the depths of his own cultural appropriation.
He started by patronizing his critic:
When that wasn't well-received, he backtracked:
Timberlake watched Williams's whole speech, apparently missed the part about cultural appropriation, and came away with a message that essentially boils down to #AllLivesMatter ("we are all one … a human race"). But, really, were we expecting better from Justin Timberlake? Did we think JT was woke?
The Justin Timberlake I grew up with used to have cornrows. He used to wear a Ja Rule-style bandana over those cornrows and sport huge diamond earrings in each ear too, doing his most to look like he'd just been invited to cameo in a Cam'ron video. Justin Timberlake thought dressing like he was a white boy at Darmouth trying real hard for the Tau Kappa Epsilon MLK Black Party was a good idea.
This is an artist whose early solo material was built on the considerable talents of Pharrell Williams and The Underdogs, bolstered by black artists and producers like Marsha Ambrosius, Clipse, and Danja, and revived once again on his most recent two albums, with work from James Fauntleroy and consistent collaborator Timbaland. Like Usher and Chris Brown, Timberlake worshiped at the altar of Michael Jackson, but somehow it was Timberlake alone who ended up on a posthumous single with the late legend ("Love Never Felt So Good"). Even as he now veers towards country over R & B, Timberlake's sound capitalizes on the roots of black American music that came before it with nary a peep of credit. If you think there'd have been a "Drink You Away" without the influences of gospel, B.B King, Buddy Guy, and Muddy Waters, then I can't help you.
Justin capitalizes on black bodies too. Going back to the infamous Super Bowl incident, it was Janet Jackson's career that stalled as a result, not Timberlake's. While Jackson was branded the cultural jezebel for revealing a breast that she herself made no move to bear, nothing about the halftime show controversy seemed to affect him. People magazine even jokingly referred to Timberlake as the "teflon man" because the controversy didn't stick. He took advantage of that white privilege: As Jackson was disinvited from the Grammys a week later, forced to withdraw from the lead role in a Lena Horne biopic, he did nothing to come to her defense. It wasn't until August 2006, a month before he was to release FutureSex/LoveSounds, that he became even vaguely woke on the topic, rubbing some of the sleep from his eyes to tell MTV, "[American society] is unfairly harsh on ethnic people."
And yet, if you go to search "Justin Timberlake Black Lives Matter," Google tries to autofill it with "Justin Timberlake Black Eyed Peas." This is not a man who is, or has ever been, down with the movement. He should be called out for it. But at the same time, the aftermath of the BET Awards should have been spent analyzing Williams's speech, not Timberlake's 140 characters. That was a moment when maybe a more striking blow to JT's white privilege (and relevance) would have been to simply roll our eyes and murmur a "girl, bye" before queuing up Beyoncé and Kendrick's surprise opening performance.
The former boy-band member did not need my consideration in that moment. Williams's speech, on the other hand, had my full attention. ("This is also in particular for the black women … who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves. We can and will do better for you." Yes.) I didn't bother tweeting about Timberlake; still haven't, actually. But that's because I know thoughts on Justin Timberlake's wrongness are evergreen (here I am now, after all). He's been using blackness as a convenient set dressing for his entire career. He collects and appropriates black talent when it suits him, and sheds it as soon as he slips into the town car waiting outside the concert. He was wrong this week, he's been wrong before, and I assure you that, shrouded in his cloak of white privilege — his teflon — he'll be wrong again. Only maybe the next time he's wrong, we can all be a little less surprised. And perhaps he'll trend a little less and the person whose shine he's stealing — Jesse's now, Janet before, God only knows who next — can trend a little more.
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