The business of Black writers who go viral ain't good business
The challenge in writing this essay is that I shouldn’t write this essay. So don’t let this go viral. Don’t let it get clicks or views. Don’t share it with people because it could threaten my well-being and my income.
That is what happens to Black writers who tell the truth.
As Kiese Laymon spells out in his pithy memoir, Heavy, America lacks space for truth. And America reserves negative space for Black truth.
For 10 years, I’ve written in a publication ghetto. Meaning, the Black sites offer to pay me because I’m Black and a writer, so I know the material and have the skills. It makes sense for them to pay me to talk about that Black shit.
The white sites often pay me for the same reason but with a minor twist. They assign me the code-switching beat, where I have to translate Blackness for a white audience — usually young white people — so the white site can be culturally current and “drive traffic” via Black Cool. Black Cool is important to young, free, hungry whites. Western media has long sold the idea that Blackness, in entertainment, in art, in news, is the ultimate fetish and that we should lust after it.
Fine enough. I need money and I’m not gonna turn Dave Chappelle on white folks for not owning that they’re fucked up, or for willfully ignoring that their power runs on them being repressed about oppressing everyone else. White readers and consumers have never wanted to own that fact because it both risks and requires too much of them.
Black readers, in my experience, want our emotions to be validated and for our outrage to be seen. We tend to want relief, while they want to be let off the hook. But the sadomasochism of Oppressor and Oppressed requires that we each play these roles.
Again, fine.
I accept jobs for three reasons:
- financial gain
- how much I can learn from the editors and writers on staff
- brand reputation
Rarely though, I'll accept a job because it’s at a Black institution, and its name means something to a Black audience. But the companies that rely on the eyes and ears and bodies of Black people to keep their profits flowing are often hampered by structural racism in the most insidious ways. When they’re not owned by a larger White entity (most of them are), they’re under-funded and desperate for market share. So they're stuck harvesting low-quality content from the gossip mill or the police blotter.
Those desperate constraints only create fucked-up contracts, internal strife, and high turnover among writers and editors. Successful Black publications also play to Black bourgeois fantasies that boast about either the size of your mortgage or the size of your hood ornament or the size of your wig, depending on where their bread is buttered. The vast expanse of Black truth can only be addressed through this prism of traditional, oppressive religious norms, through narrowly imagined ideas of Black exceptionalism (strong Black women/good Black fathers/perfect Black children/rich Black business etc.), through extreme pleasure or unending pain.
Courtesy of the Black internet, I’ve seen too many images of Black bodies bleeding to death in the street juxtaposed with toothy teens holding up countless Ivy League acceptance letters. I’ve written about these stories too, scouring message boards and news tickers for anything that might incite our raw, fragile emotions for clicks and shares.
So when I got word from a contact — a white content strategy hack — that a storied Black publication was looking to reinvent and rebrand for the digital age, I thought: “Of course they are.” I’d met him in a shallow pool of would-be Gary Vs and not-yet-Tim-Ferriss types who waxed poetic about gains, VC cash, sleepless nights, bitcoin and SEO trends. He’d been ousted from a cannabis company (a failed rebranding exercise) and started a “growth hacking agency” with another white guy he met at the last co-working space he rented. It was straight out of a slush pile spec script for Silicon Valley.
Two pioneering white guys take on the black internet with all the info they need to save it and …they just need one Black writer to make good!
They called me in for a Saturday meeting at the Wall Street working space they were renting. They pitched me on the writing of a million blogs for pennies on the dollar and even promised me a cute little byline at the once-majestic-now-irrelevant Black publication. Can you start as soon as Monday? We want to move on this, like, yesterday. There’s massive upside to this audience. They don’t know what they’re doing over there but they have huge advertisers. I’m talking, huge. I don’t know why but in every meeting with him, he slipped into phallic language and even his new company’s name sounded like a Viagra spinoff.
Beyond even the low offer for impossible labor, the Black publication owes writers money. In fact, it owes so many writers money, their delinquency birthed a hashtag and another shameful viral moment. A class action lawsuit on behalf of the unpaid writers shadowed them. For two years, the Black publication, the one selling the promise of BBD (Big Black Dreams) and MCH (Money Cash Ho’s/Mortgage Cars Heaven), battled freelance writers in court over a total sum they likely make in a month on Google Adwords. The backstory: another Black company (equity firm) bought out the Black publication hoping to run it on lean cash reserves while upholding it as a decent enough media brand to flip years of Coca Cola and Pink Sheen moisturizer ad money. The equity company had clearly underestimated the business of running a distressed media asset and whether anyone cared when a legacy Black brand renewed its vows to followers.
I was skeptical any of this could work in my favor. The white boys promised more money and feature work. As a vain writer, I drooled over the prospect of writing honest profiles of Black celebrities. Maybe, I could sneak in some Black truth on some Wayward Soul Meets Redemption shit. I said I’d be in touch. The white boys would go back to the Black publication to seal my deal and get back to me shortly after.
A week went by.
Two weeks passed.
I didn’t forget about you, bro. They’re dragging their feet on this & I have no idea why. I told them how great you were.
Knowing what I know about deals and lying white boys and Black truth, I let go of the idea that this job would manifest.
A few days after the white boy’s confused message, I got an email from a man I didn’t know who claimed allegiance to the Black publication. He’d “gotten my name from his boss” and wanted to talk about my interest in a very special opportunity. When a job offer comes in sounding like a pyramid scheme, I pause. He asked if I had time to talk that day about working for the Black publication. The one I’d just lost contact with the white boy about. Either the hack had lost them as a client and they were moving forward without him or they were going around him as they worked with him. In any case, it was shady. Not one to stop my own bag over capitalist snake moves that happen everyday, I took the call.
Long story short, we need help with headlines. And production. Is that something you’d be interested in doing?
In a few ways, I told him I would not be interested in churning out blogs, hundreds of words each, for the cost of a stale Big Mac. I told him I was only dedicated to crafting long-form, narrative pieces. I threw in all the artsy, high-minded terms I could to combat his jargon-filled, click-bait offers. Still, because I need money, and because I consider any money that comes to me, and because I’m a Caribbean immigrant, and because I’m a Jamaican whose held three and four jobs at a time, and because Black cool “drives traffic,” I heard him out.
After waiting another week, the man I’d never heard of drafted a miserable offer from the Black publication for a sad amount of money to subtract an absurd amount of hours from my day. I rejected the offer with a polite email like At this time, something something…while I appreciate the outreach blah blah…only accepting X or Y that’s in line with my goals…signed, Deez Nuts or whatever.
Then a funny fucking thing happened. The white boy, the internet guru, started texting me.
I would’ve turned that offer down too dude! I don’t even know how they got your name bro! But listen. This is a massive opportunity. They went around me I swear but. But. This could be a great thing just let me work this out. I’m in touch with Kevin Garnett dude! And Ray Lewis! And Michael Jackson! And Prince! You could do interviews! Thousands of dollars minimum.
I fumed, I hissed, and I complained to close confidants. The Black publication got in touch with me directly to offer me the peanuts they were willing to let go of in their rebranding mission. The white boy used me as a bargaining chip to show his new client he knew about Black Cool and could even verify it with a Real Life Black Friend! Who’s a writer!
In a sense, all of my rage, like most anger, is at myself. I’m angry that I write in a publication ghetto. Everyone knows ain’t no safe way out the ghetto.
I wish there were a way to write about Black shit, be myself, maintain my integrity, and secure a big ol’ bag of cash for doing it. If I could wrestle myself away from the grips of expectations like Black Cool or the White Gaze, I would. But that’s no way to earn a reputation. That way contains too much Black truth. Since the business of Black writers who go viral ain’t good business, I will go back to hiding from sharks and writing about reality shows and divorce rumors.