Who is speaking for whom?
India Arie pulled her music from Spotify in protest of Spotify’s shady payment system to musicians.
During this process, she pointed out several rigorously-decontextualized snippets of Joe Rogan saying the n-word in the course of illustrating her struggle with Spotify and some of the double standards around the company’ s enforcement of its own policies.
Or so we thought.
“Here’s my opinion.
I think in America there’s a really simplified conversation that people like to have because it makes people feel good about themselves or because it makes them feel like things are moving forward whether they actually are, or not.
You know? It’s easy to go, ‘Good person, bad person’ and ‘good guy, bad guy’ and then we solved it and then it’s done.
And I know that you’ve spoken on this. You said, ‘There were parts of [the host’s] apology where you were like ‘I appreciate that he has learned that he shouldn’t be running around, saying the n-word just to prove that he’s edgy.’
And, you also said, ‘I don’t know that I would label him a ‘racist,’ and this really struck me because I’ve talked about that on the show.
You know? Contrary to what clickbait will tell you...it is something that I struggle with on the show and I could see you having a similar struggle in this conversation.”