I'm an asshole
Kendrick Lamar is a Compton-born rapper. You remember "Boys in the Hood"? That's where he grew up. BET (Black Entertainment Television) had its awards show Sunday night and Lamar, as a luminary in the hip-hop community, performed his hit song "Alright." The performance included Lamar standing and rapping atop an abandoned and vandalized cop car.
The Five—the Fox News show where five idiots spew bigotries, all the while proving that even five people with super-low brain activity can produce words and breath—used Lamar's performance to discuss their favorite topic, "Black people being justifiably angry at a power structure hellbent on killing black people." Or something like that. Take it away, Geraldo:
This is why I say that hip-hop has done more damage to young African-Americans than racism in recent years. This is exactly the wrong message.
He goes on to use the word "conflate" to sound intelligent.
And then to conflate what happened at the church in Charleston, South Carolina with these tragic incidents involving, ah ah excessive force, ah excessive use of force by cops is to equate that racist killer with these cops is, it is so wrong, it is so counter-productive, it gives exactly the wrong message...
And he continues, saying something about Freddie Gray and how people are still dying in Baltimore and no one is protesting that. Geraldo is an asshole.
Head below the fold to watch Geraldo tell kids to get off his lawn as well as Lamar's performance at the BET Awards and more below the fold.
The song they are reacting to is in many respects a modernized version of the slave-era spiritual, "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen." This is the section of Lamar's song Geraldo is "conflating" with the downfall of African-American civility:
When you know, we been hurt, been down before, nigga
When my pride was low, lookin' at the world like, "where do we go, nigga?"
And we hate Popo, wanna kill us dead in the street for sure, nigga
I'm at the preacher's door
My knees gettin' weak and my gun might blow but we gon' be alright
First off, Kendrick Lamar doesn't equate "excessive force" with anything. He equates
murder by a racist cowardly crybaby in Charleston with
murder by scared racist police officers. Second, any time you make a statement saying that 30 years of music has adversely affected a group of people more than an institutional power structure that has been in place for centuries, you are a crazy racist.
Third—fuck you, Geraldo.
You can watch the Kendrick Lamar performance here.