I will always want to give Janet Jackson the benefit of the doubt. Her musical impact is major and majorly underrated. I still believe Rhythm Nation is one of the best albums of all time. Her career was undermined and almost destroyed by very powerful people. My point is that there’s every reason to give Janet the benefit of the doubt. But we can also call bullsh-t on her, because she just said some really f–ked up sh-t to the Guardian. The bulk of the Guardian’s interview/profile is about her life as a divorced mom living in London and her career. She apparently has to live in London because her son’s father Wissam Al Mana is London-based, and I would assume that those were the terms of her divorce from Wissam. Janet “crinkled her nose” when asked if she enjoys living in London. That’s backstory for what everyone’s talking about, which is that Janet is extremely misinformed on the American election. I have no idea what media she’s consuming in England, but it’s bad. Here’s the relevant portion, with everything in context:
We move on to talk about the state of the nation. Jackson brought politics directly to the pop consciousness with Rhythm Nation, which addressed racism, poverty and inequality – all issues just as urgent today as they were 35 years ago. She is a prolific social media user, and has used her profile to support Black Lives Matter, to bring awareness to police brutality. Does she feel despondent about how slow change is in coming or is she hopeful about the future?
“Well, there’s all this child trafficking crap that’s going on and sex trafficking crap, you know what I mean, that wasn’t so prevalent then?” It’s a strange about-turn, not least because of the many allegations of child sexual abuse made against Michael. But it is also the most forceful she has been since we sat down. “At least, we didn’t know about it back then. I don’t think we did, did we? Not really. I think it’s really now out in the open, because it’s like a billion-dollar business and all that crap.”
I wonder what internet rabbit holes she’s been going down, but, before I can ask, she’s moved on. “On [the Rhythm Nation album], for us, it was about making a difference in a kid’s life, a teenager’s life, from them taking this path with drugs and going down the wrong street to trying to make something of themself.”
On that record she sang about “joining voices in protest to social injustice” and “pushing toward a world rid of colour lines”. I wonder where she stands on the forthcoming election. After all, I say, America could be on the verge of voting in its first black female president, Kamala Harris.
“Well, you know what they supposedly said?” she asks me. “She’s not black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian.”
She looks at me expectantly, perhaps assuming that I have Indian heritage. “Well, she’s both,” I offer.
“Her father’s white. That’s what I was told. I mean, I haven’t watched the news in a few days,” she coughs. “I was told that they discovered her father was white.”
I’m floored at this point. It’s well known that Harris’s father is a Jamaican economist, a Stanford professor who split from her Indian mother when she was five. “My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters,” Harris wrote in her book The Truths We Hold.
The people who are most vocal in questioning the facts of Harris’s identity tend to be hardcore QAnon-adjacent, Trump-loving conspiracy theorists. I don’t think Jackson falls into that camp, but I do wonder what the algorithms are serving her. I start again. Harris has dual heritage, I say, and, given this moment, does Jackson think America is ready for her – if we agree she’s black? Or, OK, a woman of colour?
“I don’t know,” Jackson stage whispers. “Honestly, I don’t want to answer that because I really, truthfully, don’t know. I think either way it goes is going to be mayhem.”
She doesn’t think there will be a peaceful transition of power?
“I think there might be mayhem,” she falters. “Either way it goes, but we’ll have to see.”
I chuckled at the Guardian writer basically writing “what in the QAnon bullsh-t am I hearing now??” And that’s what it is, this has all of the hallmarks of Janet falling down a particularly batsh-t QAnon rabbit hole – the trafficking comments, the eagerness to spin/amplify conspiracies around a Black woman’s race, the ambivalence when suggesting that there will be a bloody insurrection again. And since people are dumb (including Janet, apparently), let’s say it again for the record: Kamala Harris is Black and Indian. She’s both. Her father is a Black man from Jamaica. Her mother was an Indian immigrant. Janet needs to stop falling down QAnon rabbit holes.
Throughout Sunday, this story got even more bonkers when a man claiming to be Janet’s manager apologized for Janet’s comments, saying in part: “Janet Jackson would like to clarify her recent comments. She recognizes that her statements regarding Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial identity were based on misinformation. Janet respects Harris’ dual heritage as both Black and Indian and apologizes for any confusion caused.” Then a few hours later, Janet’s actual manager (her brother Randy) said this guy does not represent Janet and that the apology is not real or authorized. So… even days/weeks after the interview went down, Janet apparently feels no need to backtrack or clarify. Very strange.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.