Killer Mike defends Kanye West meeting Donald Trump: ‘Black people should have permanent interest’
He said it's important people continue to meet up with people they disagree with
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Your support makes all the difference.The culture in 2017 increasingly expects people to oppose those they don’t agree with by disengaging with them, by “shutting them down” or telling them to “delete their account”.
As such, Kanye West’s meeting with Donald Trump last year was immediately interpreted as him offering his support to the new president, and though this might well be a possibility, so is him simply being on a fact-finding mission.
Killer Mike of Run The Jewels, a fierce Trump opponent, gets this, and didn’t see the meeting as cause for concern.
“It didn’t bother me, why wouldn’t you [meet the President]?” he told Channel 4 News. “Black people shouldn’t have permanent friends or enemies, they should have permanent interest.
“If it wasn’t for Dr. Martin Luther King being willing to meet with people like [Governor] George Wallace, Wallace would have not have ended up starting as a racist bigot and ending as a person who found God in some way, and appointed more blacks to his office than any other governor since.”
He went on to discuss a meeting Trump that had impacted him much more.
“So I maintain hope that human beings can steer a change course, but a musician meeting a presidential candidate isn’t important to me, unlike [NFL player] Jim Brown. Brown, for the last 50 years, has fought against oppression of all people.
“Him sitting with President Trump was a significant thing for me, because I know on the other side of the table he was telling the truth.”
Kanye originally explained of his 13 December meeting: "I wanted to meet with Trump today to discuss multicultural issues.
"These issues included bullying, supporting teachers, modernizing curriculums, and violence in Chicago.
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"I feel it is important to have a direct line of communication with our future President if we truly want change.”
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