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    Justin Bieber Needs Healing, Not Black Women

    By 5 Mins Read

    Even at the age of 31, Justin Bieber has been extremely famous for half his life. Bieber is so famous that he was famous before he even came out, having been the product of a bidding war between Justin Timberlake and Usher, with the win ultimately going to Usher. Even with backing by Usher, that did not stop Bieber from singing, “one less lonely nigger,” on camera, at around the age of 15, and now he’s singing with SZA on stage.

    People make mistakes or whatever.

    Even still, while Bieber is a pop artist, his influences lean heavily into the R&B territory, having worked with countless Black artists along the way. 

    In 2023, SZA released the remix to her hit, “Snooze,” featuring Bieber, and of course, it was a hit. While on tour with Kendrick Lamar in LA (May 23), SZA brought out Bieber to sing on, and boy did he look higher than goose gooch. While ‘performing,’ he looked like a confused prop as he slow-grinded, singing late and making out with SZA’s hand longingly after she grabbed his chin in a nurturing way, before they ultimately disappeared into the floor.

    It is still undetermined how the leap was made, but his disheveled state was positively likened to Blackness and the need for Bieber to find healing in a Black woman.

    Threads user @rnbass shared the video with the caption “SZA bringing out Justin Jaquavius Jamal Bieber!” One commenter even wrote in the comments of that post, “[i]n my opinion, I believe most white men secretly desire to be with a black woman BUT society has caused them to admire from a distance,” which is a scary thought if she truly believes this and even scarier if it were really true.

    View on Threads

    History has not shown that most white men have been overwhelmingly kind to Black women, not that they are overwhelmingly kind to white women, but I think they do a lot better by them for sure, so if that’s how they treat us when they desire us, I would hate to see us how they treat us when they don’t. 

    One user captioned a different video of the same performance, “I don’t know much about Sza [sic] or Justin Bieber and I have only heard this song a handful of times but I know that look. That’s the look of a smitten young man.” No, that’s the look of a married young man. Justin is married, TO SOMEONE ELSE.

    Speaking of Bieber being married, he recently received backlash from an Instagram post, which he dedicated to his wife, Hailey Bieber, for her cover of British Vogue. The caption read, “Yo this reminds me when Hailey and I got into a huge fight. I told hails that she would never be on the cover of vouge, Yikes I know, so mean.”

    Black women do not deserve that type of love, and Black women are not therapy for wayward rich white men. Bieber is hurting. Bieber is also insanely rich, having racked in $53 million in one year, before he even turned 30. Bieber can afford treatment. Bieber may not be alright, but Black women, who historically do not have nearly the resources he does, do not need to be the ones who save him.

    Bieber may be galivanting on stage with SZA or playing her boyfriend in videos, but Bieber has a wife, a white one. One whom he chose, and one whom he could probably choose to be nicer to. While Bieber may have had long-term relationships for most of his career, he is not bound by societal standards like most people are. 

    If he really wanted to be with a Black woman, he could have.

    If anything, that would have given him more street cred. Additionally, Black women are not a halfway home for sad white guys who are hellbent on destruction. He has literally several HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars, and while money cannot buy you happiness, it can buy you a really excellent therapist.

    There is a space for Black female fans to wish him healing, but lusting over a clearly broken man or projecting that he needs a Black woman to cure him is self-loathing and affirming that Black women’s healing power is more important in a relationship than their happiness.

    Addiction is hard—taking care of a grown man who is an addict is hard, too.

    While many women have taken care of broke addicts, one could argue that it is no less harmful than taking care of an addict worth several hundreds of millions of dollars.

    Bieber needs help; Bieber needs to call that lady, and it better not be SZA or someone of the like. 

    Kyla Jenée Lacey is an accomplished third-person bio composer. Her spoken word has garnered tens of millions of views, and has been showcased on Pop Sugar, Write About Now, Buzzfeed, Harper’s Bizarre, Diet Prada, featured on the Tamron Hall show, and Laura Ingraham from Fox News called her work, “Anti-racist propaganda.”. She has performed spoken word at over 300 colleges in over 40 states. Kyla has been a finalist in the largest regional poetry slam in the country, no less than five times, and was nominated as Campus Activities Magazine Female Performer of the Year. Her work has been acknowledged by several Grammy-winning artists. Her poetry has been viewed over 50 million times and even used on protest billboards in multiple countries. She has written for large publications such as The Huffington Post, BET.com, and the Root Magazine and is the author of "Hickory Dickory Dock, I Do Not Want Your C*ck!!!," a book of tongue-in-cheek poems, about patriarchy....for manchildren.

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