Tracks for Trayvon
In a recent interview with Hip-Hop DX, a hoodie-clad Nas exhibited an understandable amount of despair at the case of Trayvon Martin:
With that, Nas exhibited the ongoing battle between pain and promise that hip-hop, at its best, has long tapped. The killing of Trayvon Martin, and the wave of outrage it’s provoked, has once again put this struggle at center stage.
This is far from the first time that the hip-hop community has been moved to speak out on the flagrant racism of
You never want to hear that kind of news. When it happens, you remember how many Trayvon incidents happen everyday all over the world… It doesn’t seem like the race problem will ever get solved. I like to be optimistic, but it doesn’t seem like it’ll ever get solved.And yet, later in the interview, speaking of the same 17-year-old high school football player gunned down for walking while Black, some of that optimism seemed to peek through. “Maybe he thought in football he’d have a legacy.” said the widely respected rapper. “But now his legacy can become something that helps change things, hopefully.”
With that, Nas exhibited the ongoing battle between pain and promise that hip-hop, at its best, has long tapped. The killing of Trayvon Martin, and the wave of outrage it’s provoked, has once again put this struggle at center stage.
This is far from the first time that the hip-hop community has been moved to speak out on the flagrant racism of
Healing Racism: Trayvon and the Broken System
We Americans are prone to allowing our view of reality to be fed to us by mainstream [corporate-owned] media. We are quickly entranced by the talking heads who tell us what is going well and what is going poorly in our world, with the emphasis on what is going poorly. Yet there is no honest effort to get to the real reasons why things are going so poorly. That would be educational. Our lame-stream media has no interest in educating us.
The case in point is the death of Trayvon Martin, the teenager killed with a gun by a vigilante posing as a ‘citizen patrol’ in a gated community in Florida. The event has triggered a firestorm of protests, as well it should.
We tend to think we have no responsibility for the George Zimmermans of the world – broken humans who feel their hatred is justified and grants them the right to all sorts of abominable behavior. We know that it’s crazy. But do we see how every time we allow ‘little’ racist remarks to go unchecked, whether from a friend or co-worker, a TV show or article, we contribute to horrific situations such as Trayvon must have faced in that Florida gated ‘community’.
George Zimmerman typifies many emotionally-wounded Americans who are off-kilter, over-influenced by Fox News, the NRA and even our government(s), which creates laws like ‘Stand Your Ground’ at the behest of the
The case in point is the death of Trayvon Martin, the teenager killed with a gun by a vigilante posing as a ‘citizen patrol’ in a gated community in Florida. The event has triggered a firestorm of protests, as well it should.
We tend to think we have no responsibility for the George Zimmermans of the world – broken humans who feel their hatred is justified and grants them the right to all sorts of abominable behavior. We know that it’s crazy. But do we see how every time we allow ‘little’ racist remarks to go unchecked, whether from a friend or co-worker, a TV show or article, we contribute to horrific situations such as Trayvon must have faced in that Florida gated ‘community’.
George Zimmerman typifies many emotionally-wounded Americans who are off-kilter, over-influenced by Fox News, the NRA and even our government(s), which creates laws like ‘Stand Your Ground’ at the behest of the