Lupe Fiasco has never been one to shy away from controversial discussions about race, from the death of Michael Brown to the place of Iggy Azalea in hip-hop. On Saturday the rapper decided to share his thoughts on white supremacy in the wake of the Charleston Shooting.
The church massacre has left many speculating about the role white supremacy played in inciting such an act of terror. In an open letter posted on Instagram, Fiasco brilliantly broke down how misguided the concept of a “supreme” race is in the first place.
“White Supremacy is a lie white regularists tell to themselves in hopes that they can get a one way ticket to the top and hope we other colors overhear it,” Fiasco wrote. “Here’s the bad news, ain’t no top. Here’s the good news though, ain’t no bottom neither!”
Fiasco argued that no one race has contributed more to the world than any other. When you strip away the privilege that whiteness bestows, what you are left with is what Fiasco calls “white regularity.”
“There is nothing about [white people] biologically or physically that denotes an innate mode of supremacy,” he writes. “And to be diplomatic there is nothing about you that denotes innate inferiority as well…You are regular. White Regularity is congruent to all other forms of regularity i.e. Black, Brown, Etc etc. But in regularity there is room for differences and this is where White Regularity shines!”
He goes on to point out just how interconnected different identity groups are when it comes to invention, entrepreneurship, recording history — and even upholding the concept of white supremacy.
“White Supremacy has to validate it’s (sic) own identity based solely on its relationship to other races!,” he writes. “I mean now that’s what I would call joined at the hip. Without us there is no white supremacy because there would be nothing to be supreme over!”
Read Fiasco’s comments in full, below:
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