(Ice Cube playing Supafest 2012, Sydney, Australia. Image by Eva Rinaldi https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ice_Cube#/media/File:Ice_Cube_(6934137292).jpg)
It’s interesting that while the majority of the Black community identifies former President Donald Trump as a no vax race-baiter, many celebrity types in our community are parroting his ignorance. Suddenly celebrity entertainers, jocks, and round-the-way big talkers are medical experts. As I view some of these folks (including Nicki Minaj’s) warning against the Covid-19 vaccination, I wonder if they are as discriminating about the quality of ink used for their tattoos or the additives to the chill herbs they ingest or even the substances they allow to be injected in their gluteus maximus.
Just recently, multi-million dollar actor, rapper, and film producer, O’Shea Jackson Sr., better known as Ice Cube, made headlines because he reportedly refuses to be vaccinated for Covid-19. According to media posts, Ice Cube has walked away from a $9 million comedy movie deal after the film producers reportedly requested that all cast members be vaccinated.
Ice Cube is said to have a net worth of $160 million dollars, so there is a good chance that his family will not miss any meals because of his backing out of this particular movie deal. But, his decision comes, of course, in the midst of a pandemic that has snatched away the lives of 751,000 in the US and five million worldwide, while vaccinations are regarded as the major line of defense against the ravages of the virus.
Vaccinations have throughout history proved effective in defending against crippling widespread diseases and viruses. For example, if you haven’t heard of anyone with the dreaded disease, smallpox, thank English doctor Edward Jenner, who developed the smallpox vaccine in the early 1800s. And it wasn’t until 1980 that the World Health Organization, as a result of mass vaccinations, was able to declare the world free of the disease that killed three out of every one who contracted it.
For some, the Covid-19 mass vaccination effort may represent a government oversteps that can’t be trusted. But for others, they remember the devastation of another epidemic, polio. It was a crippling and deadly disease that was non-discriminating, no matter location, gender, age, or status. A super-wealthy Franklin Roosevelt, who would become the nation’s 32nd president, was crippled by polio, and as a result could not stand on his own, and had to wear metal braces on his legs for the rest of his life.
So, in 1960, nine years before Ice Cube was born, millions of families lined up at churches and schools across the country to swallow a spoonful of the polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk, which was placed on a sugar cube, in the hopes that neither they nor their children would end up in an iron lung to help them breathe, crippled for life, or dead. The Salk vaccine is credited with wiping out polio in the US and stopping its spread worldwide. I sincerely hope that Ice Cube seriously investigates the life-saving impact of the Salk sugar cube vaccine, reconsiders his vaccination stance, and maybe even raps a lyric about it.
Karen Warrington has had a decades long career as a broadcast journalist, communications professional, performing artist, and documentary filmmaker. She has traveled extensively throughout Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. She is committed to being a voice for the African Diaspora.
