Ok, so I’m not saying I believe this is going on, but I do wonder, and I do like to speculate. The case is a prominent musical icon who is enjoying a rather purple patch in her career right now. One where it might be almost impossible to avoid her in media.

I remember this person accusing the music industry of holding her back, of being prejudiced toward her because of her ethnicity and gender. Now I am not in the position to know if this was the truth and she is a hero for standing up for herself as a person of colour and as a female, or if it was untrue and her accusation is the tactic of a mediocre run-of-the-mill clone of every other sexy pop star in an effort to be the one that stands out or gets ahead. I imagine these days that the mileage of being an identified victim of something is recognisable as a potential commodity or tool that can be used to ensure being treated differently.

I’m not claiming that anyone in particular is using this effect to their best advantage, but I am if you know what I mean? I’ve seen it recently prove to be quite effective in the workplace, as have you I’ll guess. I’m not even sure that the people who do this know that they are doing it, I think maybe some things are absorbed into the psyche that we are consciously unaware of, we might call them cultural. The phenomenon I am describing is where one person sees that there may be an advantage to gain, in a competitive landscape, if they were to get ahead of barriers that are not even likely to exist, but that have maybe historically existed, and would maybe have been pertinent to them personally if they had existed at that time also. This is different to cultural artifacts that still apply, we are in the hangover of those and they are not to be dismissed so easily.

Let’s contend that the UK record industry always favoured the white skinned male between 1950 an 1985 (that is not something I can say is true, just an example for the purpose of this point). Let’s say that this prejudice ended in 1985 and has not been so since, but let’s also say that the opprobrium lingered well beyond, as they often do. Let us then say that it is now 1995 and our would be pop star, a woman with an ethnic minority background, wishes to come to prominence with her offerings. Would it be a tactic to offer that she feels she faces a prejudice even now, would that have people shuffling paper and making hasty decisions to make sure that she comes to prominence so that it does not seem she was prevented from doing so?

We see this all the time, people who are smart enough to use tactics will use them if it ensures their revenue, and who can blame them? I know I cannot get the woman I am talking about now off my TV screen, and I think because of that she has played a fudging blinder. Not only has she achieved the stardom she sought, she has managed to convince her fan base that she has beaten a prejudice and is a hero. This sort of hero-making places her well beyond in terms of popularity, where her run of the mill musical output would have positioned her I suspect. We can call these distinct factors, those that are external to the musical output, “externalities”, but that would only be true if they were realised and not planned in. In modern terms we might call them USP. These factors set apart the product, and these pop artists are products in a marketplace of course. The audience buys not just the music but the morals, the fashion, the style, what the artist stands for, what the artist does for charity. These aspects are just part of the product as a produced item. If we take any of the rap artists we know well, we can say that they inspire the chasing and lavish expression of affluence. If we take any country star we can say that they stand for a religiously motivated right wing conservative sort of false wholesomeness. If we take any heavy metal artist we can see from their attitude and attire that they wish to be presented as representing myth and tales of warriors enduring strife. Each of these are product based, the same is so for our hero that is fighting for women of colour. It is maybe my belief, that this is not a necessary fight, that it is a well used tactic.

If we examine the music industry critically, is it likely to be what she contends? In my youth the biggest act was Michael Jackson, a black guy. My dad had at least one Stevie wonder LP, my mum had Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick and Diana Ross on vinyl. The biggest bands of the time were Wham and Culture Club, both fronted by gay men, both containing people of colour. The Specials and The Selector both had an ethnic mix, Selector had a lead female black singer, UB40 was also an array of colour. Floella Benjamin was on children’s telly, so was Derek Griffiths. I cannot see where the assertion that that the record industry is a sexist racist homophobe that holds females of colour back out of prejudice, is justified or justifiable, but I can see the value in saying it is if you want to be artificially made to stand out in the line for stardom, especially if you’re just another partially talented singer with just more standard pop love songs to peddle, and you’d likely disappear in a heartbeat when the next product came along.

I do not like this singer’s songs, and because I do not like them she might accuse me of being a racist misogynist too, but that would be as silly as it is false, there’s nothing to gain from my questioning and I do not wish harm, I just wonder, do you?

Paul S Wilson