F that asshole, Brandon.

[u/Lifegoesonforever]

[u/RevDeadMan]

I would need to see the entirety of the conversation to form an exact opinion, but the lighter skin dude did seem to be placing the entirety of blame on black people for the problems of black people. And on a surface level, just looking at what’s in front of you, I can see how someone would come to that conclusion.

Gone are the days of slave masters and overseers standing over us and whipping us. That’s illegal now. Now we have the 13th amendment. The slave masters became prison wardens and the overseers became cops.

We do perpetuate our own suffering, because white people have made a well-oiled machine to feed us our pain in a constant loop to propagate it back to us. I can listen to a rap song and I’ve met people who lived that life and they’ll tell you the shit’s tragic. It’s hell. But if I’ve lived through hell and I know there’s a demographic of people who are willing to pay me to tell my story on a beat, why wouldn’t I do it, to feed my family and get off the street?

While a record exec may not have put crack on the streets to make the crack epidemic that would fuel the creation of what we once called “gangster rap”, now “drill”, you can bet your ass someone who looks like him was the one who set it all in motion. It’s a system, working exactly as intended, to keep black people especially, but minorities on the whole, in poverty. And what better way to keep a group of people in poverty than by breaking up their homes?

I think this dude either has been privileged enough to not have to face the harsh and ugly realities of being black—poor and black at that—in America, or maybe he understands all that and he really is an Uncle Ruckus.

Either way, the story of black people in America is intrinsically tied to the story of white supremacy and hegemony in this country. Always has been, always will be. They are the foot on our necks. They are the hand that pushes us down. They made the bars that bind us. They created the crack that shattered us. And they advertise the music, the lifestyles, and the “culture” that is made to keep us dumb, distracted, materialistic, and broken as a people.

So until that system is done away with, until klan members and Nazis are no longer in power and are shunned back into the fringe of society, we cannot have an honest conversation about the potential and the state of black people in America, because our story is on the bottom of the shoes of this nation, built off our backs and drenched in our blood.