There has been an accusation of late, one that can’t be quelled amid the present climate of hostility and rage that has been brewing for generations within every black community throughout the United States. That accusation being that “non-racist” white folk are just as complicit in the problem as those right-wingin’ “Make America Great Again” types. In short, the KKK ilk (read: Derek Chauvin, whose last name is built into the word chauvinism) that has always puppeteered the “these colors don’t run” mentality of the U.S. (and its police force), ever since the times of the Confederacy. This complicity arises from their silence. A silence that stems from both a fear of getting involved and a fear that whatever they say or do, it will somehow be deemed “the wrong thing,” racially insensitive, tone deaf, etc. We have seen that exemplified most freshly in something Madonna has, yet again, come under fire for–this time, posting an Instagram video (where all the controversy stems from, as Lana Del Rey can also attest to) of her son, David, dancing to Michael Jackson’s “They Don’t Care About Us.” Apart from mistake number one being use of any Michael Jackson song (and, at that rate, M should’ve just gone full-tilt cheeseball with “Black or White”) at this point in the wake of Leaving Neverland, Madonna made things all the worse by captioning it with, “As news of George Floyd’s brutal murder travels around the world my son David dances to honor and pay tribute to George and His Family and all Acts of Racism and Discrimination that happen on a daily basis in America. #davidbanda #JusticeforGeorgeFloyd #MichaelJackson.”
The description and video were met with across the board sarcasm and contempt, including such replies as, “Madonna I have some bad news about Michael Jackson, are you sitting down?,” “Wow. Racism is gone. Thank you girl” and “Sometimes, white people, you should just be silent.” Ah, but it is this very thing the whites are being called out for in this moment as urgings like, “White people, do something” and “The burden of ending racism sits squarely on white people” swirl about. Both sentiments being in direct contrast to this sort of aforementioned reaction. Maybe Madonna went about her support all wrong, playing into the “dance for me, black boy” connotations of a macabre minstrel show. And yes, her hashtags proved a bit off-kilter when she could have just put #JusticeforGeorgeFloyd. Perhaps she could have posted nothing at all and let David put the video up on his own account if he wanted. Or she could have kept it as simple as Beyonce did with her “Rest in Power” response (sometimes brevity is the key to evading offensiveness).
But that’s not what happened, so here we are, talking about the fine line between white savior disingenuousness, which Madonna has been accused of many times, even from the outset of her adoption of David as her first of four black children from Malawi (ironically and appropriately in this context, a former British colony under their imperialistic empire), and the “correct” way for a white person to act when speaking out against systemic racism and injustice.
Madonna’s message–always encouraging love, peace, understanding, and a mélange of all cultures and colors into one united front–may sometimes be delivered with a leaden thud (as was the case, once again, with a tribute to Aretha Franklin in 2018), but it is one that has been inherent from the start of her career. Most notably, her first single, “Everybody,” in which she sultrily commands everyone on the dance floor, from all walks of life, to get up, dance and sing. Indeed, dancing as a form of rebellion has long been Madonna’s lingua franca. Something she started in the dance classes of her high school years and that has carried all the way to the present in the form of such songs as “Batuka,” a track that pays homage to the Cape Verdean style of music called batuque, a combination of drums, dancing, and call and response singing. Historically, in fact, created as a means of resistance when slaves in the Cape Verdean trade would turn the sound of their shackles into a musical rhythm.
So yes, Madonna “wielding” David for this purpose to show that dancing is a means of protest isn’t something totally out of the realm of possibility. What’s more, Madonna will likely never be able to view Michael Jackson as anything other than the “god” he was at the time when both of their peaks of fame aligned. On that note, there is the constant reaming of M no matter what as a result of her last “relevant” achievements being from thirty-plus years ago (which isn’t really true, but is the way non-fans see it). Even if that’s the case, just because something happened a long time ago doesn’t mean it’s not relevant. Look at the riots for civil rights of the 1960s–more fucking pertinent than ever. To that point, the “Like A Prayer” video that Madonna “long ago” released in 1989 was and is a prime example of elucidating what a white person can and should do in the face of institutional racism, and is being asked to more than ever right now–to use their voice. The one that others don’t have, nor the luxury of being heard.
Opening with a burning trash can in the distance as the faint sound of sirens go off in the background, a fraught and frantic Madonna runs toward the camera, falling on the ground as she flashes to the image of a woman being physically abused and then stabbed by a group of white men. The scene then cuts to a black man being arrested for the crime before Madonna enters a church in which that same black man (played by Leon, bearing a mononym just like Madonna) is now portrayed as the statue of a saint, displayed behind a cage-like structure (yes, an allegory for the black man stuck in jail). The lyrics, “I hear your voice, it’s like an angel sighing/I have no choice/I hear your voice,” seem to be speaking not just to Leon, but all wrongly accused and racially discriminated against people in the context of their dealings with the police. So it is that she frees Leon from his cage, touching his face and bringing him to life. After he kisses her cheek, he walks out the door, leaving Madonna to very literally embody the white savior trope as she picks up an athamé-type knife from the ground and experiences the same stigmata wounds as Jesus from the nails on the cross.
The narrative then alternates back to the brutalization of a white woman as Leon tries to come to her rescue after her murderers flee. Caught in a prime example of wrong place, wrong time, the police descend upon him to arrest him for the crime as he holds the woman’s body in his arms. The white ringleader looks on at Madonna jeeringly from behind a stack of tires, as though daring her to tell the police what really happened, so sure that she won’t. It is after this that the notorious dancing in front of burning crosses scene occurs–the one that sealed Pepsi’s cancellation of her five-million dollar endorsement deal (though she did get to keep the five mil). Incidentally, it bears noting that Madonna’s “David video” has also garnered jokes about her based on the Pepsi can Kendall Jenner gave to the cops in 2017 as a means of attempting to commodify the Black Lives Matter movement.
Soon, she’s joined by an all-black choir as Leon in his black saint form returns to the church to kiss her much less chastely than he did before. It is only after he returns back into his cage that Madonna, formerly distracted by her lust, remembers that, “Oh I should go free that wrongly accused black guy.” And all it takes is her going to the precinct and obviously mouthing, “He didn’t do it,” to get him out. The End. And maybe it would be if white people did such things on the regular–as in, act, stand up for what’s right–instead of only thinking about it when tensions reach a fever pitch of this variety.
At the same time, it just seems as though if a white person “gets involved” or “helps” (as much as they can in a land founded upon discrimination and subjugation perpetuating inherent animosity between races), they’re deemed to be doing it wrong, in a way that can only be written off with an eye roll accompanied by the internal chiding, “That’s some ignorant white people shit.” If they do nothing except continue to go about their business and look the other way so as not to risk the same kind of condemnation as Madonna, they’re complacent and comfortable in the racistly rigged system of America. But if all they can do–are “allowed” to do without being met with disdain and mockery–is sign another petition or post a stock “motivational” meme when still further racially charged police killings occur then, yeah, of course no real change is going to happen. So say what you want about Madonna, but she is, like it or not, a white person who has always taken the risk and gone the extra mile by advocating for black people in her visuals and messaging (and, frankly, her dating history has shown her love as well), even in treading that icky and unwanted line to being the more contemptible “white savior.” There are few other pop stars (or any white person in entertainment) who can really say that.
