What We Can Learn from Jimi Hendrix About Race

A message of unity from the God of Guitar

Race

WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM JIMI HENDRIX ABOUT RACE

A message of unity from the God of Guitar

Joe Garza

Image by Vicki Hamilton from Pixabay

Never underestimate the predictive power of artists; they’re often more capable of forecasting the future than meteorologists, economists, and pundits combined. This makes sense, as too much time spent in the ideascape will certainly give you some insights into the ebb and flow of the human condition. Tap into that, and you can pretty easily anticipate the movements and trends that subsequent generations will see.

One of those prescient artists is legendary rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix.

His career as a front man only lasted for a few years—roughly from the release of his debut album, Are You Experienced, in 1967 to his tragic death in 1970—and ran concurrently with the height of the Civil Rights Movement. It was a time that was far more difficult for black people, as well as many other groups. The Civil Rights Act may have been enacted in 1964, but American culture was still struggling to catch up to the values pushed forward by the landmark law.

And yet, despite the genuine oppression facing black people at the time (compared to today’s “oppression” like microaggressions and implicit bias), Hendrix didn’t have time to view the world through the bifocal lens of Us and Them. He cared about harmony and peace and universal love. These are “Kumbayatic” concepts today, no doubt, but aren’t they better weapons against the forces of bigotry than that of lecturing the largely non-bigoted majority on its perceived “power,” “privilege,” and “fragility?”

Hendrix is deservedly recognized for his godlike guitar prowess and his contributions to rock ’n’ roll, but his insights into race and the motivations behind radical political coalitions should be given extra attention. In 2013, The Guardian published some excerpts from diary entries and interviews, including his thoughts on race, as here:

Race isn’t a problem in my world. I don’t look at things in terms of races. I look at things in terms of people. I’m not thinking about black people or white people. I’m thinking about the obsolete and the new. There’s no color part now, no black and white.

This is a pretty daring statement for a prominent black man to make in the 1960s and is in stark contrast to the celebrities of today who use their alabaster soapboxes to scream and spit about the dangers of racism as if Jim Crow laws were still in effect. Hendrix extolled the virtues of colorblindness in a time when almost everyone was still hyper-focused on pigment, and yet the mostly-white class of public figures today have the nerve to bombard audiences with Church Lady diatribes against everything “problematic” while sitting comfortably in their gold-trimmed, diamond-encrusted Beverly Hills enclaves, doing everything they can to save the world by dividing it. Who’s the real hero in this story?

Hendrix’s decision to stand in the middle of a racial fight and amplify the idea of unity was a courageous one, and yet more than half a century later—when things are generally better for historically marginalized groups—it still hasn’t lost its subversive edge.

The frustrations and riots going on today are all about more personal things. Everybody has wars within themselves, so they form different things, and it comes out as a war against other people. They get justified as they justify others in their attempts to get personal freedom. That’s all it is.

This statement is from decades ago, but it’s eerily descriptive of the damage and violence caused by BLM-aligned rioting in recent years. Perhaps those who decide to use destructive force against a supposed threat should look inside themselves to see what’s really motivating them to join a movement that aims to bring about a hazy dream of “equity” with a Molotov cocktail. This is not a pattern that’s limited to extreme left-wing groups; it’s just as evident in extreme right-wing movements, who are just as deserving of condemnation for their abhorrent views and actions.

Hendrix’s point here is worth a closer look; we all harbor monsters within ourselves, and it’s not hard to project those monsters onto others and declare war on them. And when we’re fighting monsters, the tendency is strong to toss out ethics and morality if it means vanquishing Evil.

Hendrix continues to demonstrate his depth of thinking with a rumination more profound than the Mariana Trench:

It isn’t that I’m not relating to the Black Panthers. I naturally feel a part of what they’re doing, in certain respects. Somebody has to make a move, and we’re the ones hurting most as far as peace of mind and living are concerned. But I’m not for the aggression or violence or whatever you want to call it. I’m not for guerrilla warfare. Not frustrated things like throwing little cocktail bottles here and there or breaking up a store window. That’s nothing. Especially in your own neighborhood.

A declaration like this—but said about Black Lives Matter today—is liable to get someone labeled racist in today’s climate. There’s no denying that many black people today experience varying forms of injustice, and that at least some of the goals of Black Lives Matter are laudable, like police reform and expanding resources to impoverished black communities. But decrying the considerable damage caused by BLM-aligned “protesters” in “fiery but mostly peaceful” street actions is bound to incur righteous criticism from its members and supporters.

Hendrix’s complexity of thought is sorely missing and sorely needed today. Discussions about ensuring freedom and equality for all are already difficult; why make it harder with fists and riots? Pointing this out shouldn’t be considered a Thought Crime, but the Thought Police are on the beat anyway.

Those looking to further the flourishing of their own group by tearing down another should heed these words from Hendrix:

I don’t feel hate for anybody, because that’s nothing but taking two steps back. You have to relax and wait to go by the psychological feeling. Other people have no legs or no eyesight or have fought in wars. You should feel sorry for them and think what part of their personality they have lost. It’s good when you start adding up universal thoughts. It’s good for that second. If you start thinking negative it switches to bitterness, aggression, hatred. All those are things that we have to wipe away from the face of the earth before we can live in harmony. And the other people have to realize this, too, or else they’re going to be fighting for the rest of their lives.

What the hell happened to the liberalism of the past that recognized the individual worth of all citizens? It was once marked by compassion for the have-nots, but is now marked by resentment for the (supposed) haves. Many of those in the vanguard of wokeness have weaponized empathy in their fight against the Cis-Heteronormative White Supremacist Patriarchy, demanding it for the groups they deem “oppressed” while giving none to those who disagree with them.

It’s a rotten shame that leftism—which has won so many valuable gains on behalf of the downtrodden—has made it its mission to demean anyone who’s straight, white, male, or any other characteristic that comes with some mangled conception of privilege. Somehow, in the woke hivemind, this new hate will lead us to progress.

The radical activists of today will constantly ignore the actual progress that’s been made and continues to be made on behalf of black people, women, and LGBT folks—they need problems to solve in order to exist, even if they need to exaggerate and make up those problems.

Do these frighteningly mainstream groups really hope to get to a point when fighting for their cause will eventually be unnecessary? Doesn’t seem like it; their objective has little in common with Hendrix’s notion of harmony, and seems to be only to keep on fighting.

Jimi Hendrix’s remarks here prove that he wasn’t afraid to criticize the often militant groups that perceived themselves to be fighting on behalf of him and others like him. He stood peacefully in the center of a fight between two groups that each shouted “race matters!” and gently responded with “no it doesn’t.”

If Hendrix were alive today, would he be impressed with the current state of race relations? Black Lives Matter protests have caused billions of dollars in damages—much of that damage endured by black neighborhoods—and the movement’s leaders recently used millions of dollars in donations to purchase a mansion where “Black creatives could come and create their art and influence things for the movement” instead of giving that money to, say, underfunded schools.

The following quotation is attributed to Hendrix:

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.

It certainly sounds like something he would say, but whether or not he really did say it is irrelevant—it’s the meaning of those words that is truly interesting. It’s practically a matter of record that the radical woke movements of our era are fighting for broad institutional, cultural, and social power, and their lust for such wide influence doesn’t predict a careful use of that power, either.

While I’ve spent most of this article imploring today’s activists to heed the words of Hendrix, the lessons of Hendrix’s words are beneficial for all of us. We all have the capacity to hate someone simply by dint of their skin color, and if not skin color, then a whole plethora of other surface attributes. That knee-jerk revulsion towards those different from us is a gateway drug to seeking dominion over them. Hendrix knew this, and warned us against that impulse.

We may have failed to consider Hendrix’s musings on love and hate decades ago, but that doesn’t mean there’s no hope for our species. His was a universal wisdom that refuses to die; sooner or later, someone else with guitar in the hands and love in the heart will emerge to reignite that bright flame of harmony.

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Joe Garza is an arts and culture writer/editor for the Reckless Muse publication on Medium, where a version of this essay was previously published. as well as a co-host of the accompanying podcast, the Reckless Musecast, available on YouTube and Spotify. He graduated from Santa Clara University with a BA in music, with an emphasis in guitar, and he also dabbles in piano and composition. You can follow Joe on Twitter, Medium, and Substack.