During an appearance on Good Morning America in July, Morgan Wallen addressed his usage of the N-word in a leaked video and went on to pledge $500,000 to Black-led groups.
Just a few months later, much of that money has yet to surface, with one of the only groups he mentioned by name accusing him of being “misleading.”
In the original clip that leaked online in February, the drunken country star yelled the racial slur as he came home from a night out. “Take care of this pussy-ass n***a,” said Wallen in the clip. He apologized for his comments, and asked his fans to stop defending his usage of the word.
During his GMA appearance over the summer, he said he had been “ignorant” and “wrong,” and suggested he had donated a portion of his album sales to groups that support Black people, including Black musicians.
"Before this incident, my album was already doing well. It was already being well-received by critics and by fans. Me and my team noticed that whenever this whole incident happened that there was a spike in my sales. So we tried to calculate what the number of–how much it actually spiked from this incident," he said at the time. "We got to a number somewhere around $500,000, and we decided to donate that money to some organizations—BMAC [the Black Music Action Coalition] being the first one."
Rolling Stone reports that BMAC has received some money from Wallen, although the group criticized the singer.
“While we are appreciative of the money, which has been used to make grants directly to Black musicians through our COVID Emergency Relief Fund, we remain disappointed that Morgan has not used his platform to support any anti-racism endeavors,” said the group in a statement. The $500,000 figure that Wallen cited “seems exceptionally misleading,” BMAC added. In total, Wallen donated $165,000 to them.
56 other Black-led or Black-founded charities across the country have yet to report receiving any money from Wallen. Organizers for BMAC confirmed that they met with the singer on his own, plus his management on numerous occasions, in February and March “in an effort to help him understand how deeply harmful, offensive and unacceptable his use of the N-word was. … We urged Morgan to use his platform to do more than just apologize, but to strongly condemn racism and to support anti-racism efforts and initiatives.”
Wallen was also criticized by the NAACP Nashville president Sheryl Guinn, with whom Wallen agreed to meet but failed to do so. Wallen could have donated to organizations anonymously, but BMAC made it clear he did not donate anonymously to their group.
