During an interview with Oprah last Spring, producer and rapper Pharrell Williams dubbed himself "New Black". In his words: "The New Black doesn't blame other races for our issues. The New Black dreams and realizes that it's not a pigmentation; it's a mentality. And it's either going to work for you, or it's going to work against you. And you've got to pick the side you're gonna be on." Pharrell’s remarks floated around ideas about being black—"our issues," our "pigmentation," our pesky way of "working against" ourselves. These ideas put the onus of racism on black people. While Pharrell likely believes he was imparting wisdom, rather than being condescending, his words still stunk of the familiar "pull up your pants" stench.

When entertainers open their mouths to talk about something other than themselves, there’s always tension. The tension is there when Kanye "rants"; it’s there when Azealia Banks talks about black feminism in one breath, and utters Bill Cosby rape apologia in another; it’s also there when the exceptional Pharrell veers into Ayn Randian bootstrapping territory. While he may have reached a higher plane of enlightenment via New Black re-invention, for many black people it’s more complicated, and hitting refresh on their blackness does not change anything.

-=-=-=-In Jay-Z’s Decoded, a memoir that doubles as a lyric book, Jay-Z seems to rebuke Pharrell’s philosophy, saying:

It’s crazy when people think that just because you have some money and white people start to like you that you transcend race. People try this shit all the time with successful black people, even with someone like me who was plenty black when I was on the corner. It’s like they’re trying to separate you from the pack—make you feel like you’re the good one. It’s the old house nigger-field nigger tactic.

Is Pharrell a house nigger? Is Pharrell’s identification as "New Black" a demarcation, separating himself from Old Black millions—"the pack" as Jay-Z says—who don’t have the luxury of money and fame to act brand new? The house nigger/field nigger dichotomy, Pharrell’s complexion aside, works because it sounds like Pharrell is happy as hell at other black people’s expense; happy to be up there with Oprah and others, not toiling the proverbial fields. But Pharrell’s happiness and self-proclaimed new black status seems like more of a positive coping strategy than stepping stone to real enlightenment. As we learned from his "Blurred Lines" deposition last year, giving unearned authorial credit to white artists on songs he’s written is status quo; he is not immune from structural racism and white supremacy. Pharrell’s own definition of new black isn’t comprehensive, nor are other people’s definitions, but what seems to be the case is that "new black" means rose-tinted shades worn inside one’s heart; Pharrell’s not unaware of sour problems—he simply chooses to ignore identity politics as it relates to his own (black) identity, a sort of reversing of the "personal is political."

Steeped in the principles, not the accoutrements of power and success, new blackness sees itself as a psychic departure from (old) blackness with the undersurface argument being that victimhood and survival are two sides of the same coin but one of the sides, victimhood, is embossed with an old white man’s face. New blackness seeks to replace the old white man’s face with the black faces of black entertainers who have magically transcended their blackness through the act of becoming richer than many rich white people. These black entertainers— Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, Jay-Z and Beyoncé—are limited. Their positions at the top are rooted both in respect and "respectability politics"—(white people like them, black people LOVE THEM). There’s a blankness, a neutrality, they have attained that is parcel to their success. They can’t be stereotyped or thrown into the same turgid categories as other black entertainers (save for Bey’s Grammy nom) because their reputations as morally upright and hardworking precedes them before anything else.