Dell
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of his hit album Reasonable Doubt, Jay-Z held a three-night concert series at Yankee Stadium in New York City. All three nights—July 10, 11, and 12—sold out quickly as longtime fans packed the stadium. According to Live Nation, attendance reached 44,916, setting a new concert attendance record for the Yankee Stadium.
Special guests who performed alongside Jay-Z on night one included Beyoncé, Blue Ivy, Nas, Alicia Keys, Memphis Bleek, and Jaz-O.
Of course, in true Beyoncé fashion, she appeared as a surprise guest and sounded fantastic, as usual.
Fans could be heard roaring throughout the crowd—stomping, clapping, and singing along. A fantastic night indeed. Yet, there was a deeper contradiction: two billionaires performing in a city where 58% of the population cannot afford to live, 1 in 4 New Yorkers live in poverty, and 420,000 children live in poverty. The average cost of living in New York City hovers around $100,000 a year, while 62% of New Yorkers do not meet the true cost-of-living threshold, based on a study completed by the government of New York City itself.
This despairing contradiction became even more apparent as Jay-Z proceeded to deliver a verse in response to the recent backlash he has faced over his partnership with Target: “They say I sold out. Yeah, I did sell out. Nights. I sold Yankee Stadium the hell out.”
Workers have been highly critical of Jay-Z’s shady dealings and behavior. Since last year, Black working-class people have been boycotting Target due to the rollback of its DEI programs and its failure to follow through on its promises to support and fund Black businesses. The boycott resulted in decreased foot traffic and a 19% decline in sales.
However, this behavior from Jay-Z is not new. His actions are representative of the class he belongs to and serves: the billionaire class. A class built on genocide, thievery, sophistry, scamming, destruction, pedophilia, murder, and exploitation.
Whenever these companies find themselves in a controversy involving Black communities, the first thing they do is bring in a member of the Black ruling class to promote images of Black excellence, progress, and diversity. Oftentimes, these tactics have worked on the working class during periods when capitalism is experiencing boom cycles. However, this illusion begins to fade when the contradictions within the system become too great and the wealth disparity between the rich and poor becomes impossible for workers to ignore.
Jay-Z is not a friend of the working class and never was. He is a capitalist whose primary aim is to profit and exploit his own people to enrich himself and his family. For years, he has climbed the ladder, stepping over anyone necessary to reach the top. His rise to billionaire status demonstrates how billionaires are truly made.
There is no ethical billionaire, and there never will be, because becoming a billionaire requires aligning oneself with a system built upon capitalism and the exploitation of working people. Jay-Z deserves the backlash directed toward him, and his continued hypocrisy will continue to be exposed.
But let us return to the beginning and examine the pattern of Jay-Z harming his own community while being used as a capitalist shucker and jiver and a prostitute for his white ruling class handlers.
The Displacement of a Historical Black Neighborhood
In 2003, the Atlantic Yards project was announced, beginning the development of Pacific Park. A major component of the project was the now-famous Barclays Center. The development process, led by Forest City Ratner, promised that the project would create new jobs, affordable housing, and economic opportunities. However, local residents saw through these promises.
Historically Black neighborhoods such as Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Fort Greene has faced mass displacement, homelessness, and rising property costs. We have come to understand this process today as gentrification.
Residents organized together, led by Daniel Goldstein, an artist who had purchased his condominium in Prospect Heights in 2003. He led a coalition of 26 community groups against Forest City Ratner. They argued that the use of eminent domain to seize private homes and businesses for a private developer violated the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the New York State Constitution.
The issue eventually reached the highest court in New York State. You can read more about the case here: Matter of Goldstein v. New York State Urban Development Corporation (2009)
The state, as we know, will use every measure available to undermine working-class communities. No clearer expression of the fact that we live in a bourgeois democracy was demonstrated than the defense presented by the Empire State Development Corporation: that the neighborhood was “blighted.”
But how could a neighborhood be considered blighted while it was rapidly developing and held deep historical significance? Residents argued that the “blight” designation was manufactured solely to justify transferring property from residents to a wealthy developer.
In the end, the New York Court ruled 5–2 against Goldstein. The brave struggle that this working-class community took up against private equity can be viewed for free on YouTube in the documentary Battle For Brooklyn.
Despite losing the legal battle, Goldstein held firm and remained the last holdout in the project area. In 2010, he reached a settlement with Forest City Ratner, receiving $3 million and finally vacated his property.
Although it is difficult to find an exact and credible number online regarding the amount of families displaced, estimates range between 400 and 2,500 families. Of course, the city would not release this data, as bourgeois historians and institutions often attempt to erase and conceal the crimes and consequences produced by their class system.
Jay-Z’s Role in Displacement
In 2004, Jay-Z acquired a stake in the Barclays Center. He held a 0.2% stake, which he was able to cash out in 2013, yielding him $1.5 million.
Da'Shaun Harrison wrote about this betrayal in their 2019 article, “Gentrification: Rich Black People Pushing Out Poor Black Folk they said:
“Notwithstanding these truths, what Jay-Z is repeatedly demanding of Black people, be it intentional or not, is for us to find comfort in being pushed out of our homes by rich people as long as they are Black. What many of us in Atlanta know, however, is that being displaced by other Black people—in our case, politicians—makes you no less homeless or jobless than being displaced by white people. Further, while the intention may be for Black folks to invest in homes for other Black people, because investment from rich people is never centered around the community in which they’re investing, it will always give way to affluent white people finding their way into our communities; this to say that whether it is via respectability, other facets of white supremacy, or the occupation of Black spaces by literal white bodies, gentrification can never benefit low-income Black communities. If what Jay-Z was going for was a call for Black community ownership, he missed the mark. Community ownership and gentrification cannot be used interchangeably, as one benefits the community and the other leads the community to its demise.”
To add insult to injury, Jay-Z was also the very first artist to open the Barclays Center. He faced immense backlash for this as well and responded with a cheeky remark.
"That's their way of diminishing our accomplishments," he said. "Don't let anyone diminish your accomplishments."
"I'm a young black African male who was raised in a single-parent home in low-income housing and I stand before you as an owner of the Brooklyn Nets."
"Don't let anyone diminish your accomplishments," Jay-Z repeated. "You don't have to be inspired by me, be inspired by Barack Obama if you choose to. Latinos in here, be the first Latino president. Ladies in here, be the first female president."
Yet, while this was happening, the Forest City development agency failed to deliver on its promise of new affordable housing. They promised 2,250 units of new affordable housing, while only 782 were completed, and much of it was not even truly affordable. According to Alex Vuocolo from Newcity:
“Additionally, the first apartment building expected to break ground this fall will not contain the number of housing for lower-income families that advocates had been led to expect. Just nine of the 35 subsidized two-bedroom units in the 32-story, 363-unit building will go to families earning incomes below $35,856, while the rest of the promised affordable units will be geared to middle-class families, not low-income ones, with rents more than $2,700 a month, watchdog journalist and blogger Norman Oder of the Atlantic Yards Report blog reported in an article for Brooklyn Bureau.” [1]
Jay-Z also did not comment on the displacement of his own people. Instead, he continued to make music that glorified Black gentrification. In April 2019, during his concert for his B-Sides album, he once again delivered another capitalist verse that reflected what critics viewed as his role in Black gentrification.
"Gentrify your own hood before these people do it / Claim eminent domain and have your people move in," [2]
But is that what actually happens? Does Black ownership actually stop displacement, homelessness, and harm toward Black communities?
The data shows us that is not the case.
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, small businesses owned by immigrants and people of color have experienced some of the worst impacts of the pandemic. In the early months of COVID-19’s spread, Black businesses closed at twice the rate of the national average, with a 41% decline in active business owners, while Latinx businesses experienced a 32% decline.
In another survey conducted by Small Business Majority, about one-fifth of Black and Latinx business owners said they expected to close by mid-2021.
These businesses are also subject to the rising costs associated with gentrification. As neighborhoods are reevaluated by private investors, small businesses are often left with increased property tax burdens, forcing them to either accept a buyout or close completely.
Another study done by National Community Reinvestment Coalition has shown that over the last 50 years, 15% of urban neighborhoods show indications of gentrification. Gentrification has now impacted 523 majority Black neighborhoods. A third of those neighborhoods underwent a full racial turnover, while almost a quarter are now diverse, racially mixed neighborhoods.
When gentrification happens it also takes black businesses with it as well. These businesses have faced the loss of their traditional clientele as residents are pushed out of their neighborhoods, taking their economic support with them. No amount of black ownership is ever going to be a positive thing for Black people if it never leads to economic freedom, community ownership, stewardship, and protection against private equity and the state.
The Limits of the Black Bourgeoisie
Black excellence will not save Black people. Neither will a small handful of the Black bourgeoisie. Neither will celebrities. When it comes to class interests, the bourgeoisie will always put itself first. It does not matter their skin tone, race, or ethnicity—they will ultimately side with their own class interests.
Let us remember that Jay-Z shot his own brother to get to where he is today, while Beyoncé and Rihanna have been criticized for benefiting from systems that exploit workers in the Global South to produce their products, paying workers unlivable wages while selling those products back to consumers in the west.
Eventually, the Hive will be disappointed to learn that the children of the bourgeoisie will often follow the same path as their parents. (Prepare to be disappointed by Blue Ivy.)
This reality is also a slap in the face to working-class people who, after spending their hard-earned wages earned through their own labor from being exploited at work, continue to financially support these artists. Without the support of working-class people, many of these celebrities would never have achieved the fame and wealth they possess.
The bourgeoisie cannot and will not play the leading role in the liberation of the working class, especially Black working-class people. Historically, Black people have been excluded from positions of power and economic advancement within society. During the Civil Rights Movement, we fought for access to those positions because we wanted to be recognized as fully human and equal within this society, and that is where the roots of black excellence began.
Yet to this day, racism continues to exist, harming and disrupting the lives of Black people, while the Carters stand on stages displaying their wealth and telling people to gentrify their own communities. This is the logic of bourgeoisie ideology on display, nothing to offer the working-class other than promoting us to exploit one another. Their philosophy is an abysmal pariah to the masses.
Whenever the Black masses begin to mobilize against the system, the ruling class brings in a Black bourgeois figure to put on a performance of bread and circuses. Shame on Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and all of the Black bourgeoisie figures who continuously appear during intense periods of class struggle for the Black working class and attempt to silence our anger against the system.
Jay-Z and the Black bourgeoisie do not represent the interests of working-class people; they are ultimately concerned with profit and how to accumulate more wealth. Workers must be aware of these tactics and recognize the pattern. These figures may criticize the system, connect their experiences directly to their Blackness, and speak about racism and oppression while using hollow radical language like a snake oil salesman. Yet behind closed doors, they continue collaborating with the ruling class.
They may criticize whiteness and acknowledge how racism has impacted them, but workers must never forget where their true class interests lie.
That is why the working class must continue withdrawing its support from these artists, holding them accountable, and organizing protests, campaigns, and future strikes. Black excellence is simply another form of deception and a reformist tactic used to maintain the existing system. True liberation, as C.L.R. James argued, can only come from the working class, organized through its own independent class organizations. Only then will it liberate itself by waging class struggle against the forces that exploit and betray it.
In his historical work The Black Jacobins, James also analyzed the colonial bourgeoisie, including groups such as the grands blancs and wealthy gens de couleur in San Domingo, noting how their interests often conflicted with those of the enslaved masses. He argued that this colonial middle class, while sometimes opposing the white aristocracy, remained limited by its own class interests and ties to the imperial system. As a result, when revolutionary change threatened their property and social status, sections of this class ultimately betrayed the revolutionary process.
Even Malcolm X called out this behavior years ago:
“There are two types of Negroes in this country. There’s the bourgeois type who blinds himself to the condition of his people, and who is satisfied with token solutions. He’s in the minority. He’s a handful. He’s usually the hand-picked Negro who benefits from token integration. But [it’s the] masses of Black people who really suffer the brunt of brutality and the conditions that exist in this country.” [3]
While it is understandable that music, sound, and vibrations are some of the only forces on Earth that can enter the body without consent, it is natural that people enjoy good music. Us Marxists are not philistines. We too enjoy good music, dancing, and enjoying the art that humanity produces, but there is a natural dialectic within this contradiction. We can enjoy good music while continuing to never ally with, support, or uplift the Black bourgeoisie. They are an enemy to the working class.
Sankofa Communist Party says: down with the billionaires!
Sources:
- [1] Allison Meier, “Jay-Z, Protesters Mark Long-Awaited Opening of Brooklyn Barclays Center,” Next City, September 28, 2012, accessed July 12, 2026, https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/jay-z-protestors-mark-brooklyn-barclays-center-opening.
- [2] Ricky Riley, “Jay-Z Called On Black People To ‘Gentrify Your Own Hood’ In Freestyle Dedicated To Nipsey Hussle,” Blavity, April 27, 2019, accessed July 12, 2026, https://blavity.com/during-webster-hall-concert-hov-called-on-black-people-to-reclaim-their-neighborhoods-in-freestyle-dedicated-to-nipsey-hussle
- [3] Robin D. G. Kelley, “House Negroes on the Loose: Malcolm X and the Black Bourgeoisie,” Callaloo 21, no. 2 (1998), accessed July 12, 2026, https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/revolution1313/files/2022/03/House-Negroes-on-the-Loose_-Malcolm-X-and-the-Black-Bourgeoisie.pdf.
