You write a lot of thoughtful articles which I enjoy, even if I only sometimes agree with the perspective.

But someone needs to tell you this one is bad, and as nobody else has yet, I guess it's going to be me.

Your bottom line is to advocate for segregation, and along the way you strip agency from the artists you intend to support.

Hopefully none of this is intentional, but it really doesn't come across well.

There is an adjacent point that you flirt with which is a reasonable one: if someone misunderstands lyrics from a black artist and decides to attack them over it, their actions may be motivated in part by racism, not true outrage. That's quite plausible, and you state it fairly well: "assuming ill-intent became a cover for racists to subvert Black creativity and justify racially discriminatory language".

It's worth exploring that angle. That's not the kind of thing people should put up with. (To some extent racists-gonna-racist so they hardly need an excuse, but it's still a good idea to point out that no, this excuse is as flimsy as the previous zillion ones.)

But the idea that Lizzo and Beyonce are having a private musical conversation with black Americans is just wrong. If that's what they want, they can ask Atlantic Records and Columbia Records if they could amend their contracts to record for, I don't know, Jamla Records, with the agreement that the music would be marketed exclusively to the black community. Part of the deal of marketing your entertainment to everyone--in addition to the big paycheck--is that you've got a lot more sensibilities lying around to be offended. Nobody can keep track of everything (though if you're smart, you'll have a savvy team on the lookout for problems). So apologize, fix, done. Which is what happened.

Don't want to apologize? Want 110% artistic freedom? Fine, but you have to cultivate that attitude so people know what to expect. Like Carlin, or Chappelle.

But the idea that you can sell your work to people but they aren't allowed to have opinions about it is just not supportable. Lizzo and Beyonce already made their choices; you can't second-guess them back into a smaller box where they have a narrower set of perspectives to care about.

So, call out racist motivations for attacking black artists? Absolutely.

Think you know better than Beyonce and Lizzo (or any musical artist, for that matter) who their audience is supposed to be? Not good.

Tell people it's morally abhorrent to express negative opinions about the content of Beyonce and Lizzo's art because of your small-box view of where they should be? Not good at all.