The Live Nation Blues
White folks tend to think of racism as someone else’s personal problem. Like, it sucks to get called the N-word or whatever, but them’s the breaks. Besides, whatever hurt feelings racism may or may not cause will eventually be solved when we finally get around to convincing everyone not to judge books by covers.
Personally, I would be overjoyed if the problems of racism were only hurt feelings. Unfortunately, it’s about a little more than that. Racism as we know it today can be traced to 1450 Portugal, when Prince Henry was looking for a way to justify his exclusive enslavement of Black Africans. And so, Henry’s chronicler, Gomes Eanes de Zurara, began writing of Black people as inferior and deserving of enslavement.
More than 400 years later, those same dipshit ideas spewed from the mouth of Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy. Weeks before the start of the Civil War, Stephens explained that the new Southern government’s “corner-stone rests … upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”
After the Civil War, tasks established as “slave work” became common jobs but never lost their antebellum status. This is why many of those jobs — kitchen and wait staff, childcare specialists, farmworkers, laundry laborers, etc. — continue to be the lowest paid in the country. Yes, COVID showed us that society completely collapses without so-called “essential workers,” but racism is a hell of a drug.
The servant class isn’t the only one trapped by this history. The entertainment class is trapped as well — especially musicians. Performers of American music are only as valued as its originators, who were paid dirt. If you have any doubt, ask a local musician how many times they’ve been asked to perform for free, and then have a seat, because you’re about to hear a very long list.
This truth is obscured by the pop stars who, like most American success stories, rose to the top by already being there. Ed Sheeran, Adam Levine, Win Butler, Kid Rock, Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift comprise just a drop in the bucket of famous musicians born into wealth and privilege. Performers like this wouldn’t be discouraged by the typical recording contract, which involves signing away the rights to your work in perpetuity while receiving an advance to cover touring costs that must be quickly paid back, usually by committing to a grueling touring schedule. A business model requiring a perpetual supply of free labor benefitting those not supplying that labor should feel disgustingly familiar to anyone who completed fifth-grade history.
The music industry is built by non-musicians for the benefit of non-musicians like managers and agents and label heads and various other middlemen. Live Nation, for example, is an international “entertainment company” claiming to be “Artist powered” and “Fan driven.” Since they promote, operate and manage ticket sales, venues and musicians’ careers, I guess that’s technically true. They’re also facing various monopoly-related lawsuits brought by hundreds of individuals, 39 state attorneys general and the federal government. These legal actions allege racketeering, price gouging, and violating anti-trust and consumer protection laws.
Oh, and this “entertainment company” is trying to build a 3,300-seat venue in downtown Portland.
If Live Nation is successful, Portland can expect to experience the alleged criminality of the “entertainment company” and the loss of its local music scene, as Live Nation’s invasion of communities frequently leads to the closing of independent venues and the exodus of local musicians. Fortunately, a moratorium has been proposed that would block the venue’s construction, and the Portland City Council is scheduled to vote on it Aug. 11. Unfortunately, its vote could be meaningless, regardless of the outcome.
Portland operates under the Council-Manager form of municipal government, an anti-democratic, white supremacist system created to subjugate Black people. In this system, the decision-making power belongs to an unelected city manager, the mayor is largely a figurehead, and the city council mostly functions as lobbyists appealing to the city manager. Portland has operated this way since 1923, when the Ku Klux Klan, along with their members and collaborators in the Portland Chamber of Commerce and the Portland Press Herald, manipulated an election, gerrymandered the city and installed this racist structure.
This is not to say that those opposed to Live Nation shouldn’t flood council chambers (again) this month. They absolutely should. But they should also manage their expectations of a government designed to choose whose interests it represents based on the decisions of a manager whom no one voted to represent them.
If any or all of this sounds especially bleak, congratulations! You now understand that racism is a little more than someone else’s personal problem.
Samuel James also writes “Banned Histories of Race in America” at samuelj.substack.com.
