Once an ambitious rapper, Hollywood star Mark Wahlberg was not such an ideal citizen as he would otherwise like to portray in his cinematic adventures. The action hero for many a young adult now, Wahlberg was misguided as a teen, either running with the wrong crowd or choosing to walk down the wayward path by himself.
The Pain & Gain star who had otherwise flown below the radar as a rising A-lister for most of his career, has been dragged time and again into the spotlight on account of his teenage misdemeanors. Now, the actor — although a family man with many regrets about his past — has raked in the distrustful gazes of critics and cynics while the more forgiving crowd has looked at him in a new light.
Mark Wahlberg Pays for the Crimes of His Past
As a white man, Mark Wahlberg is the idealized version of what many adults would like to mature into – a disciplined person with a work ethic unlike any other, who keeps his health in check and consciously maintains his routine workouts, and is so good at his job that he was the only actor to be nominated for an Oscar in a Scorsese film that also featured Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson in it.
However, it was not his breakout talent as an actor or his cheesy tenure as a rapper that made Mark Wahlberg a headline-making name. As a teenager and young adult, Marky Mark was the typical neighborhood and schoolyard bully who made the lives of a certain number of African-American children hell.
In 1986, as a 15-year-old boy, Wahlberg was reported to have yelled racial slurs and thrown rocks at three African-American teenagers, repeating the same offense with four separate Black children (fourth-graders) merely a day later. It was one of those kids from the fourth grade who made it her mission to see that Wahlberg was not only exposed for his past wrongdoings but paid for it with the same vehement hurt that she felt as a child.
Mark Wahlberg Seeks Forgiveness 3 Decades Later
As a 16-year-old in Boston in April of 1988, Mark Wahlberg served 45 days of a 2-year prison sentence behind bars for committing a racially motivated hate crime. The actor’s transformative journey from his youth to his adult years was paved by many rough turns along the way. 3 decades later, the actor finally turned over a new leaf in his life as he sought to right the wrongs of his past.
One of Wahlberg’s victims, Johnny Trihn, who was blinded in one eye during the 1988 attack, has spoken out in the actor’s favor in recent years, advocating for his pardon. Meanwhile, others have not taken to him so favorably. One of the fourth-graders, Kristyn Atwood, told the Associated Press in 2015:
I don’t really care who he is. It doesn’t make him any exception. If you’re a racist, you’re always going to be a racist. And for him to want to erase it. I just think it’s wrong.
While life as a celebrity may be hard as it is, it is exponentially more difficult to live under scrutiny as well as criticism at the same time. The surge in social and political awareness and the uptick in the Cancel Culture trend has threatened to extinguish many an established as well as rising star.
From Will Smith to J.K. Rowling to Jonathan Majors, the entertainment world has seen celebrities falling prey to Cancel Culture for being tone deaf to the current social and cultural politics of our society. Mark Wahlberg has been fortunate enough to scrape by unscathed, despite the transgressions of his past.
