Diddy, freak offs, and the nuances of oppression

A hip hop mogul's downfall reminds us that using power and influence to oppress others isn’t a white thing; it’s a human thing

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve been out of the loop on the Sean “Diddy” Combs train wreck. With the First Amendment hanging in the balance and the most anticipated election in decades less than a month away, tracking the implosion of a depraved, tantrum-throwing sex abuser has been fairly low on my list of priorities. When news first broke of Diddy’s arrest, I yawned and tossed the story into the file marked “Entertainment Monsters Who Got a Free Pass for Decades” (squeezed somewhere between Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby).

But that changed when I learned my 15-year old son was surprisingly clued into Diddy’s bizarre habits and fetishes (“Mom, seriously? You didn’t know about the 1,000 bottles of baby oil??”). That’s when it occurred to me that this ugly episode might have more cultural significance than I thought and I might need to bring myself up to speed. So I decided to dig into the story.

And the deeper I dug, the more significant the story became — just not in the way I expected.

On the surface, Diddy’s saga is a cautionary tale and searing commentary on an entertainment community that will go to the mat to defend a woman’s reproductive rights, yet somehow turn a blind eye to domestic violence and sex trafficking in its own backyard. But there’s another angle to this story that I think a lot of people are missing, one that goes beyond the hypocrisy of progressive elites.

I’ve worked in Hollywood for more than 20 years. I’ve seen and heard a lot of things that would make stomachs turn. Yet even by these standards, what was unfolding in Diddy’s compounds dwarfs the garden variety debauchery many in the industry have taken for granted. This, in addition to the sheer size and scope of his criminal enterprise, undermines a key narrative of the social justice movement.

Proponents of critical race theory (CRT) assert that people of color, and especially black people, suffer systemic inequities because of white supremacy. To be clear, white supremacy doesn’t mean running around in a robe and pointed cap with torch in hand; that’s old school white supremacy. According to Facts of Whiteness, white supremacy refers to a “political, economic, and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources” to oppress non-white people.

Black and brown people, on the other hand, don’t suffer from this malady. Our lack of power and control over systems and institutions effectively immunize us from oppressive behavior (as a result, it’s even impossible for black people to be racist).

But CRT also serves as the foundation for the more radical proposition that institutional power makes white people uniquely “bad” and that there is something inherently exploitative in their very nature. This has led a growing contingent of social justice advocates to declare that “whiteness is evil” and white people are “more dangerous than animals.”

Since the death of George Floyd in 2020, colleges, universities and companies have harnessed diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as quick-and-easy fixes for the unpleasantness of white supremacy. A backlash against “dominant” western culture has unleashed a wave of policies designed to reduce the presence of white people in schools, employment, and leadership positions. Wanna end oppression? No problem. Just get rid of white people. Ahhh, if only people of color held power instead. What a wonderful world it would be! (cue Louis Armstrong and rainbow emojis).

Sadly, the Diddy spectacle is damning proof that we can’t put oppression in the rearview mirror by simply kicking white people to the curb. When it comes to using power and influence to exploit and abuse others, white people have plenty of company.

By now, you’ve probably already heard a lot of the nasty details about Diddy (maybe even beyond the stockpiles of baby oil), but a capsule summary can’t hurt. Based on the accounts of dozens of women and men, Diddy engaged in the systematic manipulation of vulnerable people, many of them aspiring musicians, through blackmail, sexual coercion, physical violence, rape, and even imprisonment. And this went on for decades. One of the most disturbing claims is that Diddy forced his then-wife, Cassandra Ventura, to participate in “freak offs” — unhinged parties where she was allegedly forced to have intercourse with male prostitutes while Diddy watched and recorded (among other things). Even worse, some of his victims weren’t just reluctant participants in freak offs; they were slaves in an elaborate sex trafficking ring.

Diddy didn’t just wield financial control over his victims, using his power and wealth to intimidate them into compliance; he also controlled their legal avenues of escape. According to victims, Diddy was even good friends with prominent local politicians. In 2023, Governor Eric Adams granted Diddy the keys to New York City, a symbolic gesture conveying the depth of his ties and influence with leaders who controlled the city’s institutions (less than a year later, Adams would ask Diddy to return the keys after a video surfaced showing the rap mogul clobbering Ventura).

In a 2024 interview for Nightline (Diddy: Drugs, Lies & Freak offs), producer and songwriter Tiffany Red lamented that Ventura, a close friend, was terrified of Diddy.

Interviewer: “Were you scared of him?”

Red: “Yeah. What you going to do? He got the key to the city. He’s friends with the politicians. He’s friends with this person. You know what I’m saying? It’s like —”

Interviewer: “Who’s going to challenge that?”

Red: “Who’s going to challenge that and win and be believed?”

It’s not as if players in the music industry weren’t aware of what was happening; Diddy didn’t hide his behavior from insiders. But a culture of silence ensured he was insulated from publicity or prosecution.

Diddy didn’t discriminate against his victims on the basis of race. In addition to exploiting black women and men, he reportedly had his way with a 15-year old Justin Bieber. While CRT advocates would argue that race is critical to oppression (oppression = power + prejudice), it’s reasonable to ask why skin color should matter under these circumstances. If you’re on the receiving end of abuse, do you really care if your oppressor is a member of the “dominant” race or culture, and you aren’t? Or are you more concerned that your oppressor is exploiting you simply because you lack the power they have?

Now, let’s put this into perspective. Was Diddy robbing victims’ of their right to vote, get a job, give their children a decent education, or buy a home in the neighborhood of their choice? Of course not.

But he did what all oppressors do: rob his victims of the dignity that all human beings deserve. He trapped them in untenable circumstances, making them feel helpless and powerless in every possible way. And because his control was so complete on all levels — financial, professional, and legal — the oppression became systemic in their lives.

As always, I like to focus on the bigger picture. It’s unquestionable that Diddy held a frightening level of physical, mental and emotional power and control over so many people, and this wouldn’t have been possible without his powerful institutional ties. This begs the question: if white supremacy were miraculously eradicated tomorrow, and people of color were somehow gifted with systemic power, control and influence in this country, would underrepresented groups experience greater equality, inclusion or equity? Would we be safer, healthier, and more prosperous?

Or, is it more likely that powerful people of color would revert to the same behavior that many claim is inherent in white people?

One of my biggest frustrations in contemporary racial discourse is our failure to recognize and appreciate our common humanity. In the noble effort to reckon with centuries of systemic inequities, we fail to acknowledge the role that people of color have played in abusing and oppressing ourselves and others when we hold power. Our collective sense of history has been distorted to hide the ugliness that we all carry inside us. And when history is distorted, so is our reality.

We forget that Egyptians enslaved Jews for 430 years.

We forget that the most prolific slave traders in human history weren’t white Europeans, but Arabs — trafficking as many as 18 million Africans to Islamic lands for 13 centuries.

We forget that the word “slave” derives from “slav,” the white people of Eastern Europe taken by Arab traders in the 9th century.

We forget that for more than 200 years, African collaborators sold captives from rival tribes to Portuguese, French and British slave merchants.

We forget that millions of African people have lost their lives in genocides —perpetrated by black-led governments — in Rwanda, Uganda, the Central African Republic, and Darfur.

We forget that China systemically oppresses its own people and has committed unfathomable human rights abuses against others.

We forget that Augusto Pinochet tortured and killed thousands of Chilean citizens in the most brutal ways possible.

We don’t realize that even when black people attempt to escape systemic racism and inequality in the United States, they experience the same problems in countries like Mexico which are dominated by other non-white people.

We don’t see abuse and oppression unfolding in our own backyard. I recently wrote about my eye-opening experience in the U.S. Virgin Islands this summer. Its population is overwhelmingly black and its government is entirely black, yet the level of poverty is astounding, and the infrastructure worse than most in the western hemisphere.

We ignore that people of color in our own country — when empowered with authority — commit the same abuses that social justice advocates rail against. We don’t talk about the fact that George Floyd was pinned to the ground by an officer of mixed-race while another, an Asian-American, stood by and watched; that a black man, Philando Castille, was fatally shot by a Hispanic police officer at a traffic stop in Minneapolis; that Freddie Gray, Jr. died at the hands of six Baltimore police officers, three of whom were black and one of whom was a black woman.

Don’t get me wrong; none of this is meant to excuse the atrocities committed by the dominant white culture, from the transatlantic slave trade to the Trail of Tears, from the Holocaust to Jim Crow. I’m merely pointing out that the story of oppression isn’t a white one or a black one. It’s not a brown or yellow one, either.

The inconvenient truth is that the temptation to control and even abuse others in any system is as old as time, itself. It’s hard-wired in our DNA, an evil deeply embedded in people of all races. That means that all human beings — under the right circumstances, given enough power and influence, and the confidence to wield both with impunity — are capable of being oppressors.

So while it’s convenient and easy to blame white people and western culture for the ongoing challenges that people of color face, it will be a much harder task to come up with solutions that benefit all of us. Because when it comes to human nature, there’s plenty of equity. And there’s no easy fix for that.