A Singer, a Comment, and a Backlash

It's something all of us like to hear, somebody nationally known, with talent, saying they prefer to keep politics out of their art.

Matty Healy falls under that bailiwick. The 1975 frontman prefers sticking to music only, and that should've been the end of it. However, in today's culture, it's damn-near heresy to declare neutrality.

In snare-like quickness, one singer, a woman of color, unloaded on him for daring to say such things. Why? 

Singer Jade Thirlwall criticized Matty Healy, frontman of the British rock band The 1975, for remarks he recently made saying he would like to stay out of politics.

"I don’t think you can be a pop artist and cover your eyes," Thirlwall told The Guardian in a recent interview. 

"I saw Matty Healy say that he doesn’t want to be political, which I found disappointing," she added. "It’s very easy for someone who’s White and straight and very privileged to say that. Good for you, hun!"

Talk about screwy logic: If he decides to talk politics, he's accused of speaking out of turn; if he remains silent, he's attacked for white privilege.

Heads, they win; tails, he loses.

The Hypocrisy of Inclusion by Exclusion

Inclusion has been the gospel for activists for years. However, what they really mean is it's exclusion wrapped in a softer label. It's not even close to justice when critics tell Healy that he doesn't get to decide whether or not he can dip his toes into politics because of his skin color.

It's bigotry flipped on its head.

It's a repeatable script: a white artist speaks out on race, then is told to shut up because there isn't a world where he'd understand the circumstances. Then, when another white artist chooses not to speak up, he's told he's complicit in his silence.

Either way, he loses: Identity sets the verdict before the first word even leaves his lips.

Despite what the left believes, their virtue is simply another way of dressing things up as virtue.

More Voices Saying the Same Thing

The treatment towards Healy isn't isolated; it's been a message building for years.

Reni Eddo-Lodge, author of Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race, openly says she refuses to engage with whites because explaining racism to them is exhausting.

I’m not particularly surprised that PoC who have to deal with racism recognize a lot of what I’m saying, or that it resonates with them. The book’s not really about me, I know some people wish to position it as such but it’s not a memoir, it’s not my life story. It’s about white defensiveness and how we all see it happen again and again. It’s about whiteness and white identity and the way that it defends itself, particularly as a political force, in order to maintain power. I think if you’re not white, you’ll recognize it.

Munroe Bergdorf once wrote that white people are “the most violent and oppressive force of nature on Earth.” Instead of being shunned, she was elevated.

"Honestly I don't have energy to talk about the racial violence of white people any more. Yes ALL white people," Bergdorf wrote in the post. "Because most of ya'll don't even realise or refuse to acknowledge that your existence, privilege and success as a race is built on the backs, blood and death of people of colour. Your entire existence is drenched in racism. From micro-aggressions to terrorism, you guys built the blueprint for this s---."

There are many other examples out there singing the same chorus: If you're white, your words don't matter, your silence doesn't matter, your identity has already been decided for you.

What Civil Rights Leaders Actually Preached

What these leaders in racial thinking often overlook is what made Martin Luther King Jr. so powerful. He didn't build walls; he tore them down. His dream wasn't about basing opinions on skin color—it was about removing it as the primary filter in a world where equality meant something.

Today's activists are best described as members of a tribe where an invisible cabal decides who has the standing to speak, not based on equality, but on a return to the very tribalism that was supposed to be left behind.

Once upon a time, the ACLU protected speech because principle mattered more than identity. Need an example: Neo-Nazis marching through Skokie, Illinois, in the 1970s (Jake and Elwood couldn't be reached for comment).

When whole groups are disqualified from speech, free expression collapses.

Why It Matters Now

Using my best Rod Serling impression: Imagine, if you will, a world where accountability matters; where people are held by their own petards.

It's in this world where people like Sunny Hostin, Jasmine Crockett, and the "reverend" Al Sharpton are called out for what they really are: bigots. 

Some dismiss the vitriol coming out of their mouths as rhetoric, but as they've conveniently forgotten, President Obama said "words matter," conditioning how people view each other.'

If you tell enough Americans they have no right to speak, there's no harmony -- only feelings of resentment, and when resentment hardens into tribal politics, America fractures.

There are many reasons why irony is always considered, one being that it's frequently showcased as cruel. When activists scold artists like Healy or Winston Marshall of Mumford & Sons in the name of justice, they're building the same walls that civil rights leaders spent their lives tearing down.

After generations, it wasn't until 2008 that race again became a decisive factor in American society, when the color of one's skin determined how they voted, where they lived, and what they believed. 

Something happened in '08, but I don't recall what it was. That's when racial animus reached heights not seen in generations.

Final Thoughts

Matty Healy and Winston Marshall are examples of artists who should be able to simply say they'd rather not discuss politics, and the rest of us would respect them for doing so. Instead, they're being called out for their beliefs, which illustrates the world that exists now.

What it boils down to is that if you're white, you can't speak about race, and you can't be silent either. It's something that the left defines as control, not inclusion.

Free speech only means something if it applies to everyone. How dare people of color, and by that I mean racist people like Hostin and Sharpton, tell anybody that their perspective on race doesn't matter, that they determine who is qualified to talk and who isn't.

If our republic is to endure, it won't be by dividing people into those who are allowed to speak and those told to shut the hell up. It will survive by returning to the simple truth that Dr. King voiced generations ago: Judge people by their character, not their skin color.

For me, and the rest of us living in fly-over country, we live together, work together, and socialize together. Why? Because we were raised to treat people based on how they treated us, no matter their skin color. If a jerk is a jerk, it doesn't matter if he's black, white, purple, or white.

Too many times, people on the left, whether a singer, actor, or entertainer, have dictated who has the right to comment on race. 

It's time that ends, because, whether they like it or not, we all deal with racial animosity. Some of us prefer to deal with it as mature adults, while others do not. Those who haven't decided that their fame and station give them an important voice, regardless of whether they live behind guarded gates, in a connected bubble, or with paid security.

What those 'learned' people forget to realize is that the rest of us don't have the luxury of living in the silos they create. We're out here in the real world, where one person survives based on the relationship with another, regardless of ethnicity. 

And, more often than not, skin color doesn't make any difference for anybody, except the bigots on the left.

Thirlwall and Hostin are two of many whose only measure of racial authority lies in their station, skin color, and social silos. Their relevance ends with the maturity of the rest of us, who realize that we're better than they think.

It's about damn time we call them what they truly are..

Don’t Let the Gatekeepers Control the Conversation

The same cultural enforcers telling Matty Healy to “stay in his lane” want to decide what you can say, too. At PJ Media, we don’t play by those rules. We believe in speech, not silence.

Subscribe here and join a community that refuses to be silenced