Kendrick Lamar’s latest album ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’ has received unanimous praise for it’s lyricism, musicality and among other things, it’s discussions of race relations and the black community. What isn’t being discussed is the misleading idea of the ‘black problem’. On the closing moments of penultimate track ‘I‘ he says, speaking to a crowd:
‘2015, niggas tired playin’ victim dawg’
Couple this with his comments from a 2014 Billboard interview:
‘What happened to [Michael Brown] should’ve never happened. Never. But when we don’t have respect for ourselves, how do we expect them to respect us?’
If we take Kendrick’s comments of black people playing the victim and simply change the race of the man making the statement we have:
Oh what? It’s racist now a white man is saying it?
For all his good intentions, Kendrick Lamar is the latest in a growing trend of clueless black millionaires speaking for the entire black community, where he should be speaking for himself. He suggests the black community are to blame for the treatment they’ve endured and dressing better and less ‘Worldstar’ behaviour would result in racism magically disappearing.
- Few problems here: Firstly, the problem isn’t with how black people dress, the problem is with the ignorant mindset of a person who see a black person in a hoody, and feels ‘threatened’. It’s the same logic of blaming women for dressing ‘provocatively’ as the reason for rape.Secondly, suggesting people can stop discrimination by changing anything other than the colour of their skin is a lie.
- And finally how do you think black people were treated when they got dressed up in their best clothes and politely asked for the right to vote?
We do not live in a post racial society. Racial profiling is still high:
- Black men in England are 6 times more likely to be stopped and searched than white men. 28 times more likely in Manchester. 2.3% of these searches result in arrest.
- In America despite black and white people using drugs in an equal amount and the white population being 6 times that of the black, black people account for 35% of all drug arrests, despite black people accounting for 12% of all drug use.
And you’d be mistaken for thinking systemic and social racism is going away any time soon:
- 76 unarmed black men unlawfully killed by police officers from 1999-2014, not including Cedric Bartee who had his hands in the air surrendering, begging not to be shot.
- In 2015 North Miami Beach Police Force had been found using black mug shots as target practice and a South Dakota gun vendor had been found to be selling ‘run nigger’ shooting targets.
- Studies found in 75% black neighbourhoods found only 23% of the black youth had ever committed any sort of crime. Studies also found that black children were punished more severely than white children for committing the same offence in school. And that the darker your skin the heavier you punishment.
The double standards aren’t going anywhere. When a small group of opportunists were rioting in Ferguson (referenced in Lamar’s comments) the entire movement was characterised as thugs and typical of the sort of behaviour that gets black men shot. Why then, is the language changed when it comes to sports fans rioting? Remember this isn’t down to civil unrest or some injustice, it’s because some fans feel the right team didn’t win. Statistically America should be more frightened of sports fans than unarmed black men. And the Chelsea fans who racially abused a Parisian man on a train in February? Why isn’t that discussed as ‘typical thuggish behaviour’? And don’t even get me started on Millwall FC.
Terms like ‘new black’ and ‘post racial’ just give the people who benefit the most from racism an excuse to continue to support it.
‘How can I be racist? We live in a post racial society‘
A white person calling a black person a nigger isn’t what hurts society, it’s the system that suggests it’s acceptable. Kendrick doesn’t even make the vaguest of references to the causes, such as: flooding the poorest/blackest communities with cocaine, cutting social assistance to the poorest families and cutting after school clubs, demonising civil rights leaders, supporting the abolishment of civil rights and amongst other things creating a prison system that generates massive profits; resulting in a government that sees black men more as currency than people. Or we could just let Killer Mike discuss it:
Kendrick’s heart is in the right place. He is a black man that sees a lot of problems in his community and wants to be a force for change. But even though there is a black man behind the message, it’s still white supremacy in its origins. The exact same language has been used to justify lynchings, the murder of children and among other things castration. Other than a sadistic form of punishment, this was also seen as a preventative measure, for fear one these black animals may rape a white woman.
It’s the same fear that allows police ‘fearing for their lives’ to shoot unarmed black men. The same fear that has black people punished more harshly than a white person for the exact same crime. And the same fear that tells black people to ‘go back’ to a country no one in their family has been near for 400 years. Condemning the ‘angry black man’ without first addressing the multitude of reasons he has to be angry gives a free pass to the oppressor whilst also marginalising those that will spend the rest of their lives combating the same ignorant stereotype.
If you wanna help, inspire, uplift, don't point the blame and talk down.
— The Chosen One (@KidCudi) January 10, 2015
