Talib Kweli Talks Systemic Oppression In Donald Trump Era

March 3, 2017 | 3:21 PM

by Victoria Hernandez

Donald Trump has faced severe criticism from the Hip Hop community and now that he is president of the United States, he has given the people more reason to question him as he attacks the media while his team seemingly feeds the public false information.

Talib Kweli says that Trump’s rise to power is reflective of society as a whole. A quick glance at the Black Star rapper’s Twitter feed shows how he engages with people every day, seeking to debunk those who come at him.

“I think the rise of the Trump era has to do with that side of it,” he says in an interview with Unique Access Entertainment, “… understanding that people are not gonna vet their source and people are not gonna take their time to research.”

As we are in the internet age, Kweli says people have more information than ever before. With this, comes the power to filter the information and decide for themselves what is truth.

“Now we have an era where people are accepting facts from sites that are opinion sites,” Kweli says of the media’s lack of accountability. “They have no checks and balances.”

Kweli goes on to say that the media is an institution with an agenda and its “only game plan” is “to enable and protect our white [sumpremacist] status quo.”

In the interview, he says that systemic oppression has not gone away in the society where everyone can have a voice through social media. It has only transformed to the point where he’s no longer being called names on the street, but he’s having conversations online where people get offended when he talks about race.

“When I grew up, you rolled a bike to the wrong neighborhood and white boys were like, ‘You nigger,'” he shares. “… I’ve dealt with in-your-face racism. That’s why my interactions online, a lot of people get stressed out by that. They’ll be like, ‘How could you?’ I’m like, ‘That’s nothing.’ I dealt with, the shit that you’re getting stressed out, I’ve dealt with that in real life. When I was a kid and didn’t even have the language or the capacity to even deal with it. I had to figure it out as a kid. Now, those people have moved on to the online platforms. They’re still in real life and I’m not a kid no more, so I don’t go to kid shit. I go through it as an adult.”

He’s changed his approach on how he handles racism, but the problems still persist as he points to a recent incident where he says he faced prejudice at a hotel because his card wasn’t working.

“Whether or not you got $800,000 in your bank account don’t actually matter when it comes to systemic oppression,” he says.

Watch the video of Talib Kweli discussing white supremacy in the Donald Trump era above.