-Talib Kweli, it's so good to see you.
And thank you so much for being on my show.
I know this is really kind of a difficult, painful time
right now in our country.
-Yes. -And I'd just like to talk
to a familiar face and a familiar voice.
-No doubt. Thank you for having me.
It's my honor and my pleasure to be a part of this.
Good to see you, too.
-Yeah. I know. I miss you.
I always get excited when I see you,
'cause do you remember when we first met?
-I do.
First time we met was in the reggae taxi,
I think, or the airport in Amsterdam
with Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz.
-Dude, we were in the disco taxi.
That's right. -Yeah.
-And we went to Africa together.
We were kind of forced to be friends.
We were roommates for the whole time.
-Right, we were tent-mates.
I learned a lot about white people
living with you, Jimmy, in a tent.
[ Both laugh ]
-Oh, no. Can you say it on the show, or you can't?
-I learned that white people --
And I'm generalizing here, you know,
but I learned that white people play a lot of poker
and drink a lot of whisky,
at least the white people I was around, so...
-[ Laughs ] I think I did a lot of that, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I want to get into this with you if I can,
'cause I really respect your opinion on everything.
And why does this time feel different, or does it?
-This is interesting.
Reparations for African-Americans
is a sort of polarizing issue.
But during the Civil War, there was a general --
Tecumseh I feel like was his name.
He did Special Orders No. 15 where he said,
"If you fight with the Union or support the Union
and release your slaves, you get --
Slaves get 40 acres and a mule."
Now, Spike Lee named his film company
after 40 acres and a mule. We never got that.
Andrew Johnson reversed that back in the day.
But it was one of those moments in history
where they needed black people so much
and they needed black people to participate in the country
so much that they were making promises to us
in 40 acres and a mule.
Now we have a situation where young people of color,
young marginalized people, have been trapped in the house
because of the COVID lockdown. People haven't been able
to celebrate birthdays with they friends.
People haven't been able to graduate with they friends.
And then you have the perfect storm of Breonna Taylor
and Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd
being murdered by police
or by white supremacists who think they are police.
And so you have this energy
of people who have been trapped inside the house,
and they need to release.
And so we have this perfect storm
of this sort of riot energy.
The last time was saw police precincts burned down
was in 1968, when Dr. King was murdered.
Now, six days of rioting,
they passed the Civil Rights Act after that.
So, the riot, like Dr. King said,
"A riot is the language of the unheard."
When voices are unheard, they rise up in the streets.
And so now that the violence and the rioting in the streets
is starting to dissipate a little bit,
you got to look at what are the policies
and changes that come out of this?
What can we vote into being?
What can activists, whether they believe in voting or not,
contribute to the situation?
And I think talking about police reconstruction,
defunding the police --
The police have received 220% more funds
in the last 30 years --
you know, talking about reparations, now is the time,
because I think the country is in a place to hear us now.
-You've been, through your career,
very outspoken about racism and police brutality.
I was wondering if you wouldn't mind maybe telling me,
what are your earliest memories of racism?
-Wow.
You know, I grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
I remember being called the N-word
by a little Italian kid that was on my soccer team.
Like, you know, he was a cool kid on the team.
His name was Nick. And we had a race.
And I was like, "If I could beat him in the race,
I could be one of the cool kids, right?"
So he said, "Let's race." And we raced.
And soon as we finished the race,
I beat him, and I was like, "Ha, ha, I won."
He was like, "Of course you won. You're a [bleep]" you know,
so that was -- I knew the word was bad.
That was the first time I heard it.
But the feeling of feeling cool and feeling like a winner
and feeling like I was one of the cool kids
immediately was deflated with one word.
And I didn't respond to that situation
'cause I was like 7, 8 years old.
I didn't know how to quite respond,
but it stayed with me, and I vowed that I would never
let no white person call me that word
without any consequence or pushback ever again.
This is stuff that I've never spoken to a therapist about.
This is stuff that I've never spoken to my parents about.
But black people have to -- Not "have to,"
but we've internalized this trauma
and this normalization of racism
that when it bubbles up to the surface, people like,
"Oh, how you dealing with this? So sorry."
It's like, yo, I've been dealing with this my whole life.
I've been black my whole life. It's nothing new.
-Yeah. Do you think with Twitter that it's magnified
because people feel safer that they're anonymous
and that they're behind their keyboards,
and you don't have to see their face and be up-front?
-Yeah, a lot of people are critical
of my amount of Twitter engagement.
You know, I'm on Twitter a lot.
So, me, I consider myself a pro-black person.
My pro-blackness means that I combat bigoted ideals.
I don't go for individuals.
If you say something
that punches down to marginalized people,
if you say something that's hateful or bigoted,
and it comes across my radar,
I was taught that I can't ignore it.
Some people have to ignore it for self-care.
But my self-care is always speaking out.
-And how about -- Has that spilled over onto your kids?
-Man, shout-out to Amani and Diani.
You know, my kids are wonderful.
I love them so much.
When Trayvon Martin was murdered by George Zimmerman,
I went to have a meeting with Harry Belafonte
and a bunch of other people who could amplify activists' voices.
And Harry Belafonte put me in touch with the Dream Defenders.
They were occupying the state capitol in Tallahassee
to sort of try to reform and change Stand Your Ground laws.
And, so, when Trayvon was murdered,
my son was 17 years old.
And I took my son down to Florida,
and we occupied the building with the Dream Defenders.
That was me and my son's first, like, activism together.
Now I've been stuck in California.
I follow my daughter, Diani Eshe, on Instagram.
Shout-out to Diani.
I'm following her, and she's out there protesting in the street
with the people in Brooklyn, in the neighborhood
where my bookstore, Nkiru Books, used to be.
So it hits close to home.
I see my daughter out there with these people, and I get worried.
I get scared. I'm like, "Yo, you out there.
It's a pandemic going on. You could get hurt.
You could get killed. Anything could happen."
But then I'm like -- I'm proud of her at the same time.
She's my daughter.
She's doing exactly what I would have been doing at that age.
So I got to just, like, let it be.
She's the new me.
I got to let her have that.
-Yeah. Is it tough watching the news?
-Particularly for black people,
there's two sort of trains of thought.
One is we shouldn't be retweeting
and showing traumatic black images.
It's like how white people used to lynch black people
and have these picnics and parties
and just watch black death.
So I get that people are traumatized by it
and don't want to see the images.
But the flip side is, without us seeing those 7 minutes
of that cop, Chauvin I think his name is,
kneeling on George Floyd, he would not be arrested.
If some people can't deal with it, I get that.
But us seeing it moves the dial forward.
-Yeah, and it's a tough job for those journalists
and reporters on the field, as well.
-Yeah. I mean, you know, we're in an era --
Look, Donald Trump is trying to be a dictator.
Donald Trump, he might not think he's a fascist,
but he's moving in fascist ways.
When he talks about,
"When the looting starts, the shooting starts,"
it's illegal to shoot someone for taking your property,
especially if you're a cop paid by tax dollars
to protect the people.
So when he says
that black people who are rioting are thugs,
and he says the press is the enemy of the people,
they feel empowered to shoot thugs.
They feel empowered to shoot at the press,
because the press is enemy of the people.
I watched a black CNN dude get arrested on live TV.
This is insane.
When the police are targeting the press,
we don't have a democracy, a republic,
whatever you want to call it.
We have fascism. We have a dictatorship.
-And is there hope?
-Yeah, I mean, got to be. I'm an artist.
I'm an optimist by nature.
You know, but you have to follow the lead
of the people who are doing the work.
Don't engage in erasure
of the people who are talking about this
when the cameras are off.
When the cameras are not focused on George Floyd
or Breonna Taylor or Ahmaud Arbery,
there are organizations on the ground doing the work.
There's the Movement for Black Lives.
Their website is m4bl.org.
In Minneapolis, there's Black Visions MN, blackvisionsmn.org.
There's reclaimtheblock.org in Minneapolis.
You know, there's a new one -- I was reading --
Shout-out to Alicia Garza from Black Lives Matter.
She works with an organization called Black to the Future,
which have laid out a 27-page black agenda
that I completely agree with.
And I think that the things that are in that black agenda
are good for the whole country.
You know, the black agenda
is not something that just helps black people.
The black agenda is something that helps the marginalized,
the poor, the people
who are the fuel to the fire that creates America.
-I always love having you on, man.
I really, really appreciate
you taking the time talking to me.
And, again, as I said right before we started,
I missed your voice, and --
-I miss you, too, brother.
-Do you have anything new coming out that we --
I know we're not here to plug anything, but --
-Right. Well, I mean, you know,
I got a new album with Diamond D --
Shout-out to legendary hip-hop producer Diamond D --
that I'm working on. But in the spirit
of what we're talking about,
a lot of people have been hitting me up and saying,
"We need that Black Star album. We need that Black Star album."
Me and Mos Def are in the final stages of the Black Star album.
It's produced completely by Madlib,
so shout-out to Madlib and everybody in Oxnard.
But the new Black Star album
is dealing with a lot of this subject matter.
And I'm working hard -- Trust me when I tell you
I'm working hard to get it out to the people.
-I love you, man. I can't wait to see you,
hopefully next time in person, okay?
-No doubt. Let's get it. -Stay safe.
Bye, buddy. -Peace.
-Thank you, thank you, thank you.