👀 Power’s Blinding Gravity

It’s a damn shame how quickly folks forget who they’re dealing with when proximity to power makes its grand entrance. Nicki Minaj, a woman who’s built her legacy on commanding attention and carving out space as an unapologetic voice, now finds herself praising Donald Trump’s “work ethic” and negotiation skills aboard Air Force One. This isn’t a headline meant to shock; it’s a case study in how celebrity, wealth, and access can dull our collective memory and push us into cognitive dissonance.

Let’s be clear: Trump’s “work ethic” is rooted in a career of exploitation, of the poor, of immigrants, of Black communities. His negotiation style? It’s coercion masked as deal-making, all smoke and mirrors. This is the same man whose administration gutted protections for marginalized communities, the same man whose rhetoric emboldened white supremacists to march with tiki torches in Charlottesville and storm the Capitol wearing Confederate patches. ” What are we even doing?

Some will call this a power move, an example of a Black woman at the peak of her career rubbing elbows with the world’s most powerful. But let’s not get caught up in the optics and miss the forest for the trees. This isn’t some savvy political maneuver. It’s a case of misplaced admiration dressed up as strategy, and it deserves to be called out. Because when you elevate a man whose policies and ideologies actively harm Black communities, you’re not playing chess. You’re playing yourself.

Nicki’s support highlights a painful truth about fame in America: it often comes with blinders. The higher you climb, the easier it becomes to overlook the people at the bottom of the ladder who are still catching hell from the same systems you claim to represent. Trump’s presidency wasn’t just a bad TV moment; it was a direct assault on the lives and futures of Black folks, from rolling back voting rights to mishandling COVID in ways that disproportionately devastated Black communities. And now we’re supposed to clap for his “work ethic”?

What are we even doing? Some will call this a power move, an example of a Black woman at the peak of her career rubbing elbows with the world’s most powerful.

Absolutely not.

This isn’t about canceling Nicki Minaj. Her contributions to music and culture are undeniable. But celebrity doesn’t give anyone a pass to co-sign oppression or prop up anti-Black ideologies. This moment is bigger than her. It’s about the ways we, as a community, respond to Black celebrities when they align themselves with power structures built to keep us down. It’s about holding them accountable without losing sight of the systems that create this dynamic in the first place, the ways fame, wealth, and proximity to whiteness seduce even the strongest voices into silence or complicity.

So what do we do with this? First, we name it for what it is: a damn shame. Second, we remind ourselves that access doesn’t equal liberation. Sitting on Air Force One doesn’t mean you’ve arrived; it means you’ve been invited into a game designed to play you, your people, and your principles. And finally, we keep our focus on the bigger picture. Trump isn’t a symbol of progress, and anybody who tries to paint him as such needs to be met with the receipts. We can’t afford to forget what he stands for, no matter who’s singing his praises.

Nicki might see this as a flex, but for Black folks, it’s just another reminder of how easy it is for fame to disconnect you from the people you claim to represent. And if we don’t call that out, it’s not on her. It’s on us.