Transcription
What's good, y'all? Welcome back to the Onyx Report. Black masculine's news for the day. Like, share, subscribe, join, donate, support the show, hit the hype button so we can continue to bring you this independent blackmail thought.
Now, I am recording this extremely late because, uh, based on how busy my day was, meetings I had to go to, the only time I could catch the film Michael was a late showing. So, I'm literally just coming in from the theater and I wanted to say a few things.
Now, first and foremost, let me just knock this out right off the bat. Jafar, as an unknown, both as a family member and as an actor, did really well. He did really well. There were scenes where I didn't even know. I mean, it, he just scenes where he was standing in the hallway. And and mind you, this, there's going to be no spoilers. I'm not, I'm not, there's no spoilers in this review. Mostly what I'm going to talk about are either things you could pull from the trailer or things you already knew about the Jackson family. So, not going to spoil it. I will say to support it, this was directed by Antoine Fuqua, you know, um, stars Nia Long, Coleman Domingo. So, check it out.
And, you know, I, I grew up in the Michael era. I mean, Michael's been singing since before I was alive, so his music has been with me my entire life. So, this film was overdue, you know. But I will say, usually they pick someone that's kind of questionable to portray him. Jafar did an excellent job. He looks so much like his uncle. There were scenes where it, I swore it was Michael, both because of the performance and the way he looked. And y'all know what I mean when I say the performance because there are some people that have portrayed folks that look nothing like them, but if they acted well enough, they could invoke them. Cuz when you think of, like, for example, Denzel playing Malcolm X, that [ __ ] shouldn't have worked at all. Denzel looks nothing like Malcolm. But you believed it because of how well he invoked Malcolm. He invoked him, you know. So, you know, to not look anything like the character and invoke him takes a whole lot of skill. Jafar looked just like him and yet still did a good job. Now, he's not a trained, at least as far as I can tell, he's not a trained actor. He definitely doesn't have the experience under his belt of a Denzel, but he did good. He did good. He caught his uncle's quirkiness, the quirkiness that makes more sense when you watch the movie and you really get a chance to see, uh, you know, Michael's life. And it even kind of connects to his quirkiness on stage as a performer. And you could kind of see how the two come together, you know, as an artist, the kind of mind state he had to stay in. It kind of made it make more sense, you know.
Uh, Nia Long plays well in this. She does a good job. She doesn't play, I think she plays Katherine, the mother of the family, but she doesn't, she doesn't play her like Nia Long playing Katherine Jackson. She plays her as Katherine, right? She does, she did a good job. Nia can kind of get up in your face at times, but, but she played Katherine to the bone. Katherine is a, you know, she's a black woman, you know, who, who plays a, who's a Jehovah's Witness with a, like, a what, nine odd kids and a husband from a particular era. So, she doesn't play her like a modern woman getting up in Joe's face and telling him off. There is a point where there is a tell-off moment, but that's for black films, that's a standard. You should expect it at this point. Whether it was the, the Will and Serena, I mean, the, the Venus and Serena movie with Will Smith, uh, Fences, you know, it, they're not going to make a black movie without a black woman telling off a black man at some point. But I will give Nia this. She plays Catherine as Catherine. She does not venture forth and give you Nia Long. She doesn't give you modern black woman, but you still will get, you know, what you've, what you've expected to some extent when it comes to that, just not as much as usual.
But anyway, the whole reason I really wanted to talk about this film, uh, or at least aspects of it is the misandry that we've gotten extremely comfortable with. And this all, to me, I mean, if you talk about it in literature, kicks off in the 1970s with the black, with black macho, the myth of the superwoman, um, you know, maybe if you're talking about stage plays for colored girls, but definitely when it comes to movies, this is in line with The Color Purple. And it's interesting that Coleman Domingo is in this, as he was in the remake of The Color Purple. Very similar themes in that respect. They didn't go as far as Mr. in Color Purple, but Joe was definitely treated as the, as the demon, right? And it's not to say personally that he was or he wasn't. I wasn't there. I've heard stories, conflicting stories here and there about this and that. But I will say this much. You cannot discredit his position.
But more than that, what I want to talk about is the, the kind of accepted misandry that goes on now when it comes to media regarding black men. That's a constant. And I had to realize that there was a whole segment of it targeted at black fathers. You know, now in popular media, black fathers are kind of rare in the first place. I mean, even if you go back to Good Times, you know, um, they, it was a fight to get a James Evans character, you know what I mean? It, it was, it was, you were lucky to get it. Um, cuz I believe it was that's the role who had to actually, I think she threatened to walk out, walk away from the show if they didn't, uh, let her have John Amos come in there and play her husband. The show was a spin-off from Maude and, um, you know, they changed the names. James was on there, but his name was different, so they brought him on, but she, she actually said they were going to make her a single mother. She required a husband. She would not let that, that character not have a husband. Other than that, you know, black fathers have been relatively rare. There was a little renaissance in the '90s, you know, the '70s and the '9s, you had little moments, but it, you know, it's not a constant, but by and large, black fathers don't often get the credit they deserve.
Now, I can talk about this in the, in, in the aggregate in the sense that statistically, we've known for some years now that black fathers are the most participatory fathers across race. As a whole, they're not credited for being such. And the popular deadbeat dad narratives, you know, black men still wear the fa, were the face of that notion. But even when you talk about standout celebrities or more to the point, fathers who produce celebrities with their children, they often either don't get credit, get downplayed, or get forgotten, you know. And there's a long list of them. I mean, just off, I, I wrote, I jotted a few down in the last few minutes. You have, you know, uh, and this is in no particular order. You got Will Smith with Jaden and Willow. And it's not a matter of what you think about their kids or whether you like them. That's not the point. The point is what black fathers have contributed to producing children who've been, who've become known, right? You got Rocky Johnson, the Dwayne "The Rock's" father. You got James Jordan over Michael Jordan. Dion Sanders producing Shadur and Shiloh. You know, Dale Curry, right? Steph Curry's father. You got Joe Bryant, Kobe Bryant's father. Ken Griffey Senior, right, and his son, Ken Griffy Jr. Calvin Hill, father to Grant Hill. Muhammad Ali producing Laila Ali. You got Lavar Ball and his sons, you know. Richard Williams, you know, father of Serena and Venus. You got Earl Woods, Tiger Woods' father. Matthew Knowles, Beyoncé, Destiny's Child, you know. John L. Rogers, Prince's father. He was Prince's, uh, first, uh, influence growing up as a musician. And then we come to Joe Jackson.
Now, there are others we can name, and feel free to name them in the comment section. They don't have to be liked. They don't have to be loved. And you don't have to like the celebrities they, they created. I'm just pointing out examples of black fathers who were instrumental in producing, you know, offspring that became known and yet often get downplayed or dismissed. And this h, this is what happens with Joe Jackson. A lot of times they're dismissed because they're not always remembered fondly and they scare other people, in particular, because of the level of discipline. And this is what fathers are known for. This is even where mythologically the notion of Saturn as the disciplinarian is, is instrumental. It's masculine. It is the coach. It is the teacher. It is the father who pulls out of you what you don't know is there. The father pushes you past your comfort zone, even to the point where you hate him, and he pushes you into a greatness you don't know.
Now, this doesn't always have to lead to international fame, but it can be about pushing you beyond what you thought was possible. And one of the ways that fathers do this, and I know my father did, um, rest in peace, what he did is he taught me how to be self-disciplined. In other words, he put his voice in my head until over time, I could hear that voice without him standing in front of me. And then after a while, his voice in my head became my own voice. And to this day, when I need to get up and do something when I don't feel like it, he taught me discipline. He taught me priorities. He taught me how to set goals and prioritize what I did in order to reach those goals. He taught me how to finish and follow through on something. He taught me that my feelings about something did not determine the value of the situation. In other words, if I wanted to become a great basketball player or a scholar and professor, he taught me that there were going to be times where I wasn't going to like it. I wasn't going to be in the mood for it. And just because I felt those things did not mean that that was the end of the discussion because he said, if you want to achieve the things you want to achieve, you're going to have to accept that you're not going to feel like it at times and push past it.
Each of the fathers, well, I won't say each because I don't know the intimate details behind all of these fathers, but I will say the quality of a father is to do that. It's to push you past your limits. And sometimes you don't appreciate it until you either become a father or at least you reach a point of wisdom where you understand that you would not be where you were unless you learned how to sacrifice and you learned what discipline was. This is what fathers do.
But one of the things you also see many people don't do, including a lot of people when it came to Joe Jackson, is they don't look at context. People today will look at a Joe Jackson, they'll call him an abuser. Why? Because he spanked his kids. Now, there are all kinds of rumors that I've heard growing up about all kinds of different things, but I, if I can't verify it, I won't talk about it. Half of them, I don't remember. And I'm sure some of you out there, many of you probably know way more about the ins and outs than I do. I'm going off the narrative of what was presented in the film, right? They will call him an abuser. But you got to look at the context. First of all, this is a cat that was born in 1928 in Arkansas. That's first and foremost. He was a steel worker in the early 1960s. He had a band. He and his brother used to play together. They didn't, they never got a record deal. He was a steel worker with a whole bunch of kids. And I want to say they were living in a two-bedroom house in Indiana in the early '60s. And from what I was told, actually an interview I heard with, um, one of the Jackson 5, I didn't remember which one it was, he actually said they wanted to perform. It's not that their father forced them to, which is a popular notion. The film doesn't go into that, but it's just a popular idea that people look at it like Joe forced his kids, he enslaved them to do this, and they said no, they wanted to do it.
But I was this way with my son. I told him very early on in elementary school, I said, "Look, you can choose whatever activity you want to sign up for, but I will make sure that if, whether you like it or not, you will finish it. I don't care if it's chess, I don't care if it's wrestling, I don't care if it's basketball, you choose the sport, but you're going to finish whatever you start. So, if you don't like it, that's, that's irrelevant to me." I did that on purpose. I wanted him to know how important it was to finish. And this is why even now in college, all of his friends that he's met at the college have pretty much dropped out for a variety of reasons. This is no disrespect to them or their families, but my, my son is still there. He's the only one in his cohort that's still there. It's the same reason I pushed him when he was a little kid to finish whatever he started each year. I said, "You can play any sport you want. You can change sports as often as you want, but whatever you start, you're going to finish." This is what fathers do.
When it came to, came to Joe, you're getting that kind of discipline, that kind of drive, but you're getting it from a cat who's working at a steel. He's a steel worker trying to feed a family, knowing full well that if he didn't push them past their comfort zone, they probably would have all been just doing what everybody else did. And by the time they hit the late '70s, they would have hit de-industrialization and those factory jobs would have been gone, too. So, everybody would have been in poverty and struggling. But that said, you got to understand the context. And men of that era were expected to do things a little differently. They weren't lovey-dovey. They weren't emotionally present. Those were not the requirements of a father at that time. You had to be disciplined. You were expected to lead. You were expected to shoulder the stress and the burden. You were expected to make decisions. There wasn't a lot of room. But there were no social expectations for emotional presence. That was not how that worked. And as far as, you know, uh, spankings were concerned, corporal punishment was a norm. I got worse than I saw in the movie with Mike. You know what I mean? I don't know what may have happened that didn't make the movie, but ass-whippings were, were, were not spared in many black families' households, regardless of what you think about it now. So, we have to be, we have to be careful about presentism, right? The desire to go back in the past and judge things that took place. No, ass-whippings were common. Especially in the South in the '50s and '60s, stop it. But, you know, now if somebody's getting beaten with a baseball bat by their parent, that's a different thing. But if you're getting whooped, that was a norm for many black families.
But I do want to play something for you that I think is interesting because it highlights a little bit about what Michael himself thought about this. Now, this is, uh, it's kind of long, but I got it on one and a half speed. This is from a gentleman who was going to read a speech that Michael gave about his father. Check this out.
So, right after this Michael movie came out, there has been a lot of discourse about Michael Jackson's relationship with his father, Joseph Jackson. Right? People have differing opinions. Some people think Joe was a monster. Some people think that he had, he did what he had to do to get his family out of Gary, Indiana, and to make them successful. But I had a thought, um, or I remember back to this speech that Michael gave at Oxford University in 2001 that's in a book that I have, and I think it's really interesting and I think it's something that everybody needs to hear. So I'm going to read it to y'all. Um, it's a little long, so buckle up.
So he says, "You probably weren't surprised to hear that I did not have an idyllic childhood. The strain and tension that exists in my relationship with my father is well documented. My father is a tough man and he pushes my brothers and me hard from the earliest age to be the best performers we could be. He had great difficulty showing affection. He never really told me he loved me and he never really complimented me either. If I did a great show, he would tell me it was a good show, and if I did an okay show, he told me it was a lousy show. He seemed intent above all else on making us a commercial success, and at that, he was more than adept. My father was a managerial genius, genius, and my brothers and I owe our professional success in no small measure to the forceful way that he pushed us. He trained me as a showman, and under his guidance, I couldn't miss a step. But what I really wanted was a dad."
>> Well, and but he says what he really wanted is a dad. I'm going to let him finish. But just think about that for a moment. What would it take for a black man to discipline his sons into becoming worldwide celebrities coming out of what, Gary, Indiana in the '60s? You got teenage boys that are looking to hit everything moving. They looking to experience things. They want to get out and shake and move like their friends. How much discipline would it take to rally that many kids, keep everybody focused on one goal? What kind of personality would you have to have for that to happen? Right? Anyway.
>> "I wanted a father who showed me love, and my father never did that. He never said, 'I love you.' Wolf looking me straight in the eye. He never played a game with me. He never gave me a piggyback ride. He never threw a pillow at me. But I remember once when I was about four years old, there was a little carnival and he picked me up and put me on a pony. It was a tiny gesture, probably something he forgot five minutes later. But because of that one moment, I have this special place in my heart for him because that's how kids are. The little things mean so much to them. And for me, that one moment meant everything. I only experienced it that one time, but it made me really feel a lot differently about him and the world.
But now I am a father myself and one day I was thinking about my own children, Prince and Paris, and how I wanted them to think of me when they grew up. To be sure, I would like them to remember how I always wanted them with me wherever I went. How I always tried to put them before everything, including my albums and my concerts. But there are also challenges in their lives. Because my kids are stalked by paparazzi, they can't always go to a park or a movie with me. So what if they grow older and resent me and how my choices affected their youth? Why weren't we given an average childhood like all the other kids? They might ask. And at that moment, I pray that my children would give me the benefit of the doubt that they will say, 'Our daddy did the best he could given the unique, unique circumstances that he faced. He may not have been perfect, but he was a warm and decent man who tried to give us all the love in the world.' I hope that they will always focus on the positive things, on the sacrifices I willingly made for them. And not criticize the sacrifices circumstances may have forced upon them or the errors I made, I have made, and will certainly continue to make in raising them. For we all have all been someone's child. And we know that despite the very best of plans and efforts, mistakes will occur. That is just being human. And when I think about this, of how I hope that my children would not judge me unfavorably and will forgive me, my shortcomings, I am forced to think of my own father. And despite the part of me that denied for years, I have to admit that he must have loved me. He did love me. And I know that there are little things that showed it. When I was a kid, I had a real sweet tooth. We all did. My favorite food was glazed donuts. And my father knew that. So every few weeks, I would come downstairs in the morning and there on the kitchen counter was a bag of glazed donuts. No note, no explanation, just the donuts. It was like Santa Claus. Sometimes I would think about staying up late so I could see him leave them there. But just like with Santa Claus, I didn't want to ruin the magic for fear that he would never do it again. My father had to leave them steadily at night so no one might catch him with his guard down. He was scared of human emotion. He didn't understand it or know how to deal with it. But he did know donuts. And when I allowed the floodgates to open up, there are other memories that come rushing back. Memories of other, other tiny gestures, however incomplete, that showed he did what he could. So tonight, rather than focusing on what my father didn't do, I want to focus on all the things he did do and on his personal challenges. I want to stop judging him. I have started reflecting on the fact that my father grew up in the South in a very poor family. He came of age during the Depression, and his own father, who struggled to feed his children, showed little affection toward his family and raised my father and his siblings with an iron fist. Who could have imagined what it was like to grow up a poor black man in the South, robbed of dignity, bereft of hope, struggling to become a man in the world that saw my father as subordinate. I was the first black artist to be played on MTV. And I remember, remember how big of a deal that was, even then. And that was in the 1980s. My father moved to Indiana and had a large family of his own, working long hours in the steel mills, work that kills the lungs and humbles the spirit, all to support his family. Is it any wonder that he found it difficult to expose his feelings? Is it any mystery that he hardened his heart, that he raised the emotional ramparts? What other choice does a man have when his life was a struggle just to get by? And most of all, is it any wonder why he pushed his son so hard to succeed as performers so that they could be saved from what he knew to be a life of indignity and poverty? I have begun to see that even my father's harshness was a kind of love, an imperfect love, to be sure, but love nonetheless. He pushed me because he loved me. Because he wanted no man to ever look down at his offspring. And now, with time, rather than bitterness, I feel blessing. In the place of anger, I have found absolution. And in the place of revenge, I have found reconciliation. And my initial fury has slowly given way to forgiveness.
Almost a decade ago, I found a charity called Heal the World. The title was something I felt inside of me. Little did I know, as Schmoolie later pointed out, that those two words from the form the cornerstone of Old Testament prophecy. Do I really believe that we can heal this world, and that is riddled with war and hate and genocide even today? And do I really think that we can heal our children, the same children who can enter their schools with guns and hatred and shoot down their classmates like they did at Columbine? Or children who can beat a defenseless toddler to death like the tragic story of Jamie Borger? Of course I do. Or I wouldn't be here today. But it all begins with forgiveness. Because to heal the world, we first have to heal ourselves. And to heal the kids, we first have to heal the child within each and every one of us. So he says a little bit more, but oh, I'll end it with this. He says, "To all of you tonight who feel let down by your parents, I ask you to let down your disappointments. To all of you tonight who feel cheated by your fathers and mothers, I ask you not to cheat yourself further. And to all of you tonight who feel like telling their parents they can go to hell, I ask you tonight to extend your hand to them instead."
>> All right. So, it's interesting to note that Michael actually reached a point with his father that the film doesn't. The film again is very much in line with The Color Purple. So the notion there is that, you know, black men, even those who push their families into success, are monsters and remain such. And it's not just black men, because we can be all kinds of monsters according to the media industry, right? We, whether you're, you're a killer with a gun, you're robbing people, robbing stores, whatever it may be, you know, raping or beating women. But when it comes to fathers, it's a very interesting trend that is very much in line with Mister from The Color Purple, right? And even in the film and in popular culture, I mean, you know, Joe is blamed for oppressing the family and, and, you know, some of his decisions, you know, caused Michael all kinds of physical pain, even though he didn't have any direct impact on that, you know. But so there's this generic, and I'm not going to go into detail, but if you go watch the film, you'll, you'll see what I mean. He's blamed for things that he had no direct impact on. And then all throughout the film, there are these knowing looks between the children and some of the people that come in to do business with the Jackson family and of course through the mother. And they have these knowing looks that Joe is a monster. They're looking at each other and they're supporting each other under this, this, this iron-fisted monster, right? Who's, who's abusive, you know, in all kinds of monstrous ways. And of course, the mother and the children, um, are really, it's Katherine and Michael, but they're on the same level. They get it. It's just if this monstrous black man just left them alone, they'd be happy. This is the kind of idea we get.
But it's very much in line with the culture, not only the films that we've seen since the 1980s, but even in terms of the last few weeks where, you know, individual acts in the world have come together in this strange kind of way to reinforce the notion that black men are monsters. Yet again, this misandry in the culture that people are so comfortable with, so, so tied to, to where it's the oxygen we breathe, it can be brought up over and over again and nobody cares. It's just a constant at this point. A matter of fact, there's a new film that'll be out shortly called "Is God Is" that just based on the trailer alone looks like it's about to reinforce this. I mean, from what we get, this is Viva Fox playing a woman who's been all burned up, and she assigns her two daughters to go delete their father because he caused the burns. He tried to kill them, apparently. And one of the daughters is burnt up as well. Now, this is just what we get from the trailer, so I haven't read anything as far as a book is concerned. For all I know, it could flip everything on its head and he could be a great guy. I rather doubt it, but I'm just saying.
But again, going back to this notion of misandry and popular culture, you know, it's, it's a constant. Again, it's kind of died down for a little bit, then it had a resurgence with the rise of the, the, the Color Purple remake, and it's still going strong with "Is God Is," and unfortunately, as much as I enjoyed elements of this movie, it joins that trend as well. Just not as, you know, obviously he's not, you know, Joe isn't burning the family or anything, but it's still in line with that. And so to hear Michael actually talk about his f, his understanding of his father and what it took for his father to do what he did, it's interesting that the film didn't, and it's interesting that, you know, the popular cult, popular culture we have, even in the black community, hasn't reached that point. You know, we still haven't, we will take events where black men are guilty and turn them into misandrous notions of what black men as a whole do. But we won't do it for black women. And this is why we have to call out the misandry because it's one-sided.
Like, if you take a case like this, right? This is Fox 2 News. "New York Woman Convicted for Throwing Dynamite at Boyfriend, Blowing Off His Hand." There's the image of her right there. Is this going to turn into some type of ongoing misogyny? Are we going to make a series of movies about women who delete their boyfriends and husbands or blow off limbs? And are we going to talk about how this is emblematic of who they are and, and, and we're going to pathologize all of this and turn it into a statement about black womanhood as a whole? Or will this just be another stone in the pond of a black woman who has caused severe hurt to a black man, and that's it? Now, I'm not suggesting we pathologize, but I am suggesting that if we're not going to pathologize her and black women as a whole, then we need to stop doing it both ways. This one-sided approach to this that castigates black men because of the acts of a few and ignores black women's behavior doesn't work for me. And I, I don't think it works for black men as a whole.
But I'll read a portion of this. "A New York woman was convicted after authorities said she threw a handmade stick of dynamite at her boyfriend while he was sleeping, causing his hand to be blown off as he attempted to get rid of the explosive. Apparently, he woke up hearing the sound, the hissing sound of the, the wink or whatnot. Kiana Wedell, 35, of Deer Park on Long Island, was found guilty by a jury on Friday of first-degree assault and first-degree criminal possession of a weapon in connection with the March 2024 incident." I don't even know where you find freaking dynamite. Anyway, don't get me started. "Wedell had threatened the victim with dynamite several times in the months leading up to the incident, right?" So, she's not only, she did not, she only did it, she was threatening him with it. "Domestic violence can escalate to deadly levels in this case as a sobering reminder of that reality. According to District Attorney Raymond Tierney, uh, March 22nd, 2024, Wedell and her boyfriend were involved in an argument. Notice how it always starts with an argument in his apartment. Right after the dispute, the man left the apartment and told Wedell to leave. When he arrived back home, Wedell did not appear to be there and he went to sleep. He was later woken up by a hissing sound and noticed a flame on the floor of his bedroom. He then realized that a stick of dynamite had been thrown into his bedroom and attempted to toss the explosive device out of the window, but it detonated and blew off most of his hand before he was able to throw it out of harm's way. The victim then ran out of his home to the driveway, at which point he saw Wedell running away. He was subsequently rushed to the hospital where the remainder of his hand and part of his arm were amputated. She was arrested the following day. Sentence is scheduled for May 27th. She can be facing 25 years in prison." Right? So, this article is dated April 27th, 2026. And there we go.
I ask again, is this going to lead to a whole groundswell? Are we going to see black men writing think pieces and coming together online to talk about how abusive and oppressive black women are to the degree that we need to call them monsters and pathologize all black women on the basis of her behavior? See, we can all do that. I mean, I, I show you, you know, horrible acts by black women all the time, but I usually am making a very specific point, as I am right now. But you still haven't seen black men come together and do what we've seen black women doing in this last few weeks alone. And it seems to be reinforced by Hollywood. It seems to be reinforced by industry. It seems to be reinforced by corporatism. The, the misandry I'm talking about seems to be reinforced culturally within the community, within the family, within intimate relationships. As a black male, everywhere you turn, there are levels of misandry that are being thrown at you. And we were never able to call it out before because there was no platform for black men to actually compare notes and discuss. So, we've seen it for decades, but we never called it out. We never organized around it to any great extent. But it's been going on for quite a while, and it's everywhere we turn.
So, Michael, good film, but still adds to this tradition because of this contempt that people have for black men. And no matter how many black men, whether they are unknown everyday men just taking care of their families and raising their kids and sacrificing to do so in silent ways that nobody notices, or whether they produce worldwide, world-renowned celebrity offspring. One of the things I tend to notice is they generally are forgotten about. Most of the fathers that I, I, I named off to you earlier aren't really credited in any significant way for all the sacrifices they made. They kind of get dismissed, you know.
But anyway, as usual, I want to hear your thoughts. Let me know your ideas. Let me know your experiences. Let me know what you think about this issue of, uh, this accepted misandry, especially as it relates to how black men are remembered, perceived, and articulated. All right, y'all. Peace.