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    Why are Black rappers aligning themselves with the right? | Tayo Bero

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    Scrolling through Twitter a couple of weeks ago, I came across a clip of rightwing commentator Tucker Carlson interviewing a face I never thought I’d see on his platform: Ice Cube.As in Fuck Tha Police Ice Cube.“What planet am I on right now?” I found myself thinking.In a two-part segment, Ice Cube and Carlson commiserated about cancel culture and cast doubt on the safety of the Covid vaccine. “It was six months, kind of a rush job and I didn’t feel safe,” Ice Cube said about his widely-publicized resistance to the Covid shot. He also claimed that he’s been banned from appearing on the talkshows The View and Oprah because he is too much of an “independent thinker”.It seems Ice Cube has become quite the conservative media darling lately, sitting down with not just Carlson, but Joe Rogan and Piers Morgan as well. He’s joining a long list of rappers – Kanye West, Da Baby, Kodak Black, Lil Pump – who have all put themselves in dangerous proximity to conservative politicians even as rightwing populism threatens to destroy their communities.Kanye campaigned for Trump, and both Lil Wayne and Kodak Black publicly supported the former president after being pardoned by him on his last day in office. In 2020, Trump even brought a supportive Lil Pump out to a Michigan rally (where Trump introduced him as “Lil Pimp”), while Da Baby was also very vocal about supporting Trump’s second bid last year.We can try to excuse this behavior or dress it up as “opening a dialogue” or “crossing the aisle” as much as we like, but that is not what this is about. So what do these rappers have in common with rightwingers who wouldn’t otherwise touch them with a 10ft pole?Shared values.In discussions about money, gender identity, public health and a variety of social issues, rappers and rightwingers have a lot more in common than you’d immediately think. Many people from both groups share hypermasculinity, conservative Christian values, and a distrust of social institutions (justified or not); and on this common ground sits a messy and dangerous alliance full of people who ordinarily would hate each other, but have come together to make vulnerable people their enemy.Ice Cube, for example, is a well-documented anti-vaxxer, and has expressed bigoted views on gender identity, as have many of his colleagues like Da Baby, Boosie and others.And when it comes down to the raw cents and dollars, modern-day wealth solidarity between mainly Black rappers and powerful conservatives isn’t entirely surprising. Ownership in hip-hop is whiter than ever and the nature of the music itself has become increasingly capitalistic. Rap is no longer the embodiment of African American resistance it once was. Now, it’s a hyper-commercialized cultural assembly line that’s somehow been re-designed to glorify the very issues it once pushed so hard against.That’s why society’s current obsession with Black billionaires and one-percenters as “success stories” constantly falls so flat. The notion of building individual wealth as a means of collective liberation is as sinister as it is stupid. We know that Black wealth hoarding can’t save us and that recreating the violent architecture of capitalism – but with Black people in the positions of power, of course – does nothing for the plight of everyday African Americans. Still, hip-hop legends like Jay-Z continue to peddle this demented lie because that is the very function of capitalism: keep the poorest in society busy providing cheap labor while they chase an impossible dream.Then there’s the pseudo-intellectual bunch, who mask their self-serving motivations as elevated political awareness. Say what you want about Democrats and what they have or haven’t done for Black people in America, but Kanye West campaigning for Trump wasn’t some stroke of genius – it was one of the most self-hating and objectively stupid moves that a person in his position could have made back in 2016. But Kanye’s thirst for relevance, combined with a pathological desire to be contrarian and his new hyper-religious bent, made him the perfect kind of Trump-loving troll.As many rappers gain inordinate wealth and power, they’re increasingly exposed to the ways that all of that can also be a gateway to political influence and social dominance. These men don’t want a better America for Black people, they want one where their worldviews are advanced, regardless of which enemies they have to sleep with in order to make that happen.And while Black voters obviously don’t owe loyalty to any one political party, some rappers do function as community leaders in many ways, and they always have: that’s why their allegiance to the right needs to be called out now. The custodians of rap as an art form have a duty to be responsible with their platforms. And when I say responsible, I’m not talking about respectability politics and pearl-clutching about raunchy lyrics. I’m talking about the stuff that materially affects Black people’s lived experience, like what kind of politics to adopt, and why.What’s perhaps most fascinating about all this is the fact that many rappers are willing to align themselves with white supremacists not in spite of their marginalization, but because of it. I don’t blame Black people – burned by decades of generational disenfranchisement and then walloped over the head with the illusion of meritocracy – for trying to keep their place at the top no matter who they have to play nice with.But romancing fearmongering xenophobes isn’t keeping us at the top, it’s digging a pitiful hole to the bottom, a new low from which Black people as a community will not recover if we don’t put a stop to it now.
    Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Ice Cube and 50 Cent highlight conservative faction among Black, male voters

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      After Ice Cube garnered headlines for his tweets announcing a collaboration with the Trump administration on what was called a Platinum Plan for Black America, the hip-hop mogul faced immediate backlash for supposed hypocrisy and misogyny.
      “Black men are breaking my heart with this caping for [Ice Cube and the president]. Apparently y’all want to be to 2020 what White women were to 2016,” tweeted scholar Brittney Cooper.
      Political analysts also chided the rapper for failing to admit that he declined invitations to meet with both the Joe Biden campaign and Kamala Harris.
      The Los Angeles-based rapper neither disavowed working with nor endorsed the president, but the illusion of aligning with Trump allowed campaign officials to signal Ice Cube was proof of “Blaxit” – an initiative calling for the exodus of Black Americans from the Democratic party.
      50 Cent encouraged followers to “vote for Trump” after posting that Biden’s proposed tax plan only amplified criticism. He’s since dialed back his support. The sometime rapper faced a mountain of criticism for claiming he doesn’t “care Trump doesn’t like Black people” in the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election.
      Rosa Clemente, an activist and former Green party vice-presidential nominee, argued that these celebrity interventions run counter to existing, youth- and women-led initiatives fighting for institutional change.
      “They’re right to critique the Democratic party, where they’re wrong is to act like there aren’t already movements out here,” she said. “We don’t need another Black agenda. Yet here come these rappers over the age of 50 who’ve publicly decided to align with a white supremacist”.
      While polls show Trump trailing his Democratic rival, his campaign launched a late bid for Black voters by touting the administration’s record on criminal justice reform, funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and declines in Black unemployment – and even pledging to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.
      The South Carolina senator Tim Scott has been one of the president’s most loyal supporters in the administration’s push to attract Black men. Ahead of the state’s February primary, the former Republican congressional candidate Brad Mole, of Charleston, told the Guardian that outreach is resonating in places like the more traditional south. “At some point Black conservatives decide they’re ‘not voting for this person or this ticket just because [their] grandma or parents did,’” he said.
      Terrance Woodbury, founding partner of the marketing research firm HIT Strategies, argues the conservative political leanings of public figures like 50 Cent or Ice Cube speak to a faction of the Black male electorate underrepresented in political conversations.
      “These trends did not start this cycle and there are generational differences. Black men in general are more socially conservative but Black men under 50 are positioned very differently than their elders,” he said.
      “Beyond generation, there’s both a turnout and performance problem that Democrats have experienced with Black male engagement,” he added.
      “Trump’s support among Black Americans is underwater, yet consistent over time with Black support for GOP presidential candidates,” Sam Fulwood III, a fellow with American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies (CCPS), wrote for the Hill.
      Before dying of the coronavirus, the Republican entrepreneur and Trump campaign surrogate Herman Cain advocated for “Blaxit”, (a Black exit from the Democratic party) by telling Fox Business that Black Americans have “been brainwashed” into hating Trump, but many aren’t “buying the perception”.
      But in decades since white southerners flocked to the Republican party in response to the civil rights movement, Black voters have still maintained close ties with Democrats.
      Pew analyzed 2017 data and found that although African American voters remain overwhelmingly Democratic, support “has declined modestly”. About two-thirds of African Americans identified as Democrats, down from the first half of Barack Obama’s presidency.
      Back then, about 75% of Black Americans affiliated as Democrats. Just 8% identified as Republican, the same percentage as voted for Trump in 2016.
      Young Black voters, both men and women, are defecting most. Fulwood noted CCPS’s latest survey found “young Black Americans tend to view Democrats much less favorably – and Republicans more favorably – than their older peers.”
      But while the survey found 79% thought Trump is racist, 74% said he’s “incompetent” and 73% disagree with his policies, men more often “admired how the president shows strength and defies the establishment”.
      “Young Black men are rationally responding to their experience within an American political system that for all of their lives has been either hostile or indifferent to their concerns that the political deck is stacked against them and that politicians – Democratic or Republican – just don’t care about them,” he said.
      However, that strongman persona – defined by bully-like attacks, sexism and a refusal to apologize – could seal the deal for conservative, Black men disillusioned with the Democrats, and some critics contend that endangers Black women.
      “It’s internalized racism and misogyny that would allow anyone to align with a party so against your basic humanity while a majority of Black women fight them,” Clemente said, noting Black men, like most men overall, least supported a Black vice-president candidate.
      “We’re leaders in this movement and we will not be erased.”
      A fight for the next generation
      Woodbury noted that young men in HIT’s focus groups have been “extremely anxious about race, and cynical toward an entire political system that they feel like has not produced anything for them”.
      Across the country progressive leaders and activists are also working to attract young, Black voters who say Democrats no longer speak for them. Clemente argued “Democrats are dropping the ball” in reaching Black men.
      “They’re voting for their lives,” she said, adding Black people can be critical of Democrats without being contrary to the movements that advocate for them.
      “Young people keep hearing ‘we’re against ending fracking,’ ‘we’re against defunding police,’ ‘we’re against forgiving students loans,’” Clemente said. “They hear a party so against their values they want to know what the fuck are you even for?
      By stepping into the fray so late in the game, she said, conservative celebrities silence the communities who will still support them long after election day ushers in a president working against them. More

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      in US Politics

      What Ice Cube's collaboration with Trump – and critique of Democrats – reveals | Malaika Jabali

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      Throughout this election season, the rapper Ice Cube has assumed a self-bestowed mantle as spokesperson for Black politics. He has urged that Black Americans make demands before guaranteeing anyone their vote. “Be skeptical of anybody telling you to just vote … and not get anything for your vote,” he said on Instagram in September. “You vote because your community is getting something.”Last week, Donald Trump’s senior adviser Katrina Pierson announced that Ice Cube worked with the Trump campaign to develop their “Platinum Plan” for Black America, unleashing a furious wave of public criticism and accusations. At the core of the backlash is the suspicion that Cube’s commentary and his chief political initiative, the Contract with Black America, is less about promoting a Black agenda and more about suppressing Black voter turnout for the Democratic party, which Black Americans overwhelmingly support.The accusation compelled Ice Cube to appear on a number of media outlets to clarify his position. “I’m willing to work with both teams, but I’m just working with whoever is willing to work with me,” Ice Cube said on CNN. In an interview with journalist Roland Martin, Cube said “for us not to engage with both sides of the aisle to fix what I think is an American problem … is not going to help us in the end.”’Small government’ won’t fix the mess that neoliberal public policies have created for Black peopleThis controversy reveals several things about American politics, and specifically the sad state of political affairs for Black people. For starters, the political environment is so fraught – and voters are so antsy about another four years of a Trump presidency – that any appearance of impropriety will raise alarm bells for many Black Americans. But that instinct has the effect of silencing even mild criticism of Joe Biden or the Democratic party. We’re closer and closer to the election, and two-party tribalism is in overdrive, nuance is mostly absent, and commentators are falling into their expected camps. Conservatives gleefully use Cube’s message to prop up Trump. Liberals largely dismiss Ice Cube as a race traitor without sitting with his concerns. And Ice Cube defenders reflect little on Cube’s botched political strategy or the market-based, libertarian-esque philosophy he’s proposing for problems that require radical solutions and wholesale government intervention.The fact of the matter is, Black Americans defending and criticizing Ice Cube both have valid concerns. Neither major political party is working for Black Americans economically. The Black-white wealth gap is alarming, with white households holding 11.5 times more wealth than Black ones, and the gap continues to widen. Black homeownership is at a record low. More Black people are being imprisoned than in the 1960s. And both parties have contributed to these policy failures while letting big business off the hook for practices that exploit and harm our communities. This includes encouraging manufacturing jobs to leave for cheaper, deunionized labor in sectors that were disproportionately occupied by Black men; failing to adequately regulate big banks who profited from subprime mortgages targeted to Black communities; failing to assist Black Americans when the economy crashed on their backs; and enabling corporations to make astronomical profits off the disproportionately Black and Latino workers working in essential jobs during Covid.As long as we’re stuck in a two-party system backed by big corporations, big money donors and financial institutions, Black people will never find a reprieve. We’ll simply jump from one party to the next, or out of the ballot booths altogether. We’ll frame our political power solely on the terms of what party leaders promise and consistently fail to provide. We’ll seek whatever meager concessions we can muster – taskforces, committee leadership promotions, and an assortment of patronage jobs – that ultimately leave many Black people disappointed and disillusioned.It’s the disappointment I saw in multiple Ice Cube interviews. It’s the resignation I’ve heard from working-class Black Americans all over the country in my reporting. Thus, given the acute economic crisis for Black Americans, it behooves anyone speaking on their behalf to have their shit together, to put it bluntly. We cannot afford anything less. Anyone with basic political instincts should know that any association with a white nationalist-sympathizing president could and should significantly turn off Black voters. Cube’s strategy has heaved sound policy ideas into a tribalist, corporate media meat grinder, rendering the original message unrecognizable. It reduces the 22 pages of (mostly) impressive and sweeping policy prescriptions in Cube’s Contract with Black America – proposals such as baby bonds, a jobs guarantee, and freeing people imprisoned for marijuana possession – to a two-page “platinum” talking point for Trump’s lackeys.If Ice Cube wants to reduce the Black agenda to a mere election-season transaction – without considering the more fundamental relation between Black liberation and anticapitalism – he should at least get his basic business sense right. There are some parties you just don’t negotiate with, because the starting terms are too far apart. Donald Trump comes from a party that promotes small government and normalizes white supremacy. A transformative economic agenda requires large, government investments in low-income and working-class communities. This runs counter to the entire Republican trickle-down economic platform of the past several decades. The present Republican administration has yet to provide basic economic programs en masse in an election year for millions of Americans suffering from the financial fallout of Covid-19, many of whom are Trump supporters themselves. It is beyond fantastical to believe Trump, or any Republican president, will advance programs to Black Americans that he doesn’t provide his own followers.But most of Ice Cube’s liberal critics fail to acknowledge that the Democratic party has fared little better. Though his strategy and conclusions are miscalculated, his description of the problems are not. The Republican party has moved right and dragged Democrats with them; the result is that Democrats have spent much of the past several decades working overtime to outflank Republicans on tough-on-crime policies, austerity politics, deregulation and privatization, and it’s that school of thought of which Biden has been a longtime instructor.“Small government” won’t fix the mess which exploitative business practices and neoliberal public policies have created for Black people. What it will likely take are independent voters, a mass movement and progressive organized labor – which cannot be corralled a few months before an election – to make demands for radical, systemic change. This is serious work that, at the least, requires consistent commitment and being in community with organizers and policy experts who have been thinking and working towards those demands for more than a season. Anything less will fail the very communities people like Ice Cube claim to represent.Watergate reporter Bob Woodward will discuss the Trump presidency at a Guardian Live online event on Tuesday 27 October, 7pm GMT. Book tickets here More