Summary
The annual Essence Music Festival has shifted its focus away from Black women to cater to a global audience. The festival started in 1995 in New Orleans, LA. New owners are destroying a crucial Black Media institution.
Due to a late start and construction in downtown Indianapolis today, I was not able to make it to the Indiana State Library before it closed. I’ll try again tomorrow.
Once I got home, i put on my pajamas, ate dinner, and shuffled through the various streaming services until i finally landed on PBS. I watched a How to Sue the Klan, a documentary about The Chattanooga Five, a group of Black women who were shot by the klan. The assault occurred in 1982.
Then I watched the PBS series on Gospel Music, but my focus was divided between the evolution of our worship music and the controversy surrounding the most recent Essence Music Festival in New Orleans. More specifically, the evolution of the annual festival’s shifting priorities from centering on Black culture (women) and, instead, pivoting to a global focus.
Essence Magazine was founded in 1970. Its focus, until recently, has solely been Black women.
Our hair.
Our skin.
Our fashion.
Our health.
Our careers.
Our families.
Essence was purchased by Richelieu Dennis in 2018. He is the same person who purchased Shea Moisture and shifted the brand’s focus to be ‘more inclusive.’ That means, Black women in the natural hair community were no longer the target audience. Two Black-owned and Black-focused brands are no longer centering African American women. Black women are being pushed out of, or downright denied entry into, spaces created for us and by us. What’s especially upsetting about the very public demise of a Black media institution, is the fact that it is being carried out by people who look like us. The only difference is that they proudly identify by their African country of birth.
Because they know from whence they came. Unlike the American Blacks, who lack a culture. That insult has made the rounds over the course of several years and across various social media platforms. The second worst: We were weak for not escaping slavery sooner. But, I digress.
Imagine insulting the descendants of stolen people because their histories and languages were intentionally erased to make it difficult to communicate and maintain their (African) culture. African Americans are often mocked and told that we do not have a culture. The same people who copy, imitate, emulate, and consume everything we create insist that we do not have a culture.
Then they buy it in an attempt to adulterate its origins and/or destroy it. Beyond ironic considering Mr. Richelieu Dennis descends from Liberia. The same Liberia where some freedman were sent when white people no longer wanted to deal with them.
This entire debacle looks, walks, and quacks a little too much like a lovechild of gentrification and appropriation to be anything else. Maybe they are partially correct: Black Americans do not have a culture because everyone is too lazy to enrich their own, so they steal ours….piece by piece.
