Ice Cube is still saying things.
The 51-year-old rapper clearly still feels a way about the pushback he’s been receiving about not only meeting with Purgatory President Donald Trump but lending any credence to whatever the fuck Trump says he’ll do for this “Contract With Black America.”
“Let me get this straight, I get the president of the United States to agree to put over half a trillion dollars of capital in the Black Community (without an endorsement) and Niggas are mad at me? [cry-laughing emojis]...have a nice life,” Cube tweeted early Thursday morning.
Look, I know Trump ran on a platform claiming he was not your typical politician, but this “Platinum Plan” (still upset at this urban-reach-ass name) he made for the Black community is textbook political pandering! Hell, I don’t expect any white male politician of either party to dedicate that amount of money to the Black community—not when white supremacy exists! Plus, Trump had this meeting and made the agreement right before the presidential election, too?! As Politico notes in a recent report, Trump’s promises for the Black community are one thing and our reality under his administration these past four years is another.
Politico’s Nolan D. McCaskill writes:
The president frequently touts a record-low Black unemployment rate, funding for historically Black colleges and universities, opportunity zones and criminal justice reform as evidence of what he’s done for African Americans.
But the wins Trump claims come with a combination of caveats and skepticism, according to policy experts. They also ignore the ways his policies are furthering racial segregation, not to mention stoking racial divisions and violence.
For example, Trump’s “Platinum Plan” for Black Americans is only two pages, a fraction of former Vice President Joe Biden’s “Lift Every Voice” plan. The president’s outline includes four pillars and several promises over the next four years, like safe urban neighborhoods with the highest policing standards (Black people live in rural and suburban areas, too).
Regardless of his questionable tactics, Ice Cube does seem eager to better the Black community in the best way he knows how. One of the major issues, though—is the constant erasure and suppression of Black women, as rapper Noname recently reminded us, dropping screenshots of a 1991 interview between Angela Davis and Cube.
A snippet from the interview:
Ice Cube: Let me tell you something. Well we have kids looking at television, hearing the so-called leaders in this capitalist system saying: it’s not all right to be poor - if you’re poor you’re nothing – get more. And they say to the women you got to have your hair this way, your eyes got to be this way...What you have is Black people wanting to be like white people, not realizing that why people want to be like Black people. So the best thing to do is to eliminate that type of thinking. You need Black men who are not looking up to the white man,..who are not trying to be like the white man.
Angela Davis: What about the women? You keep talking about black men. I’d like to hear you say: Black men and women.
IC: Black people.
AD: I think you often exclude your sisters from your thought process. We’re never gonna get anywhere if we’re not together
IC: Of course. But the Black man is down.
AD: The Black woman’s down, too.
IC: But the Black women can look up to the Black man until we get up.
Nearly 30 years later, this sentiment of his is still relevant because late last month, Cube named the “scholars” he consulted with—and there was not one Black woman to be found.
The 1991 interview continues:
AD: Well why should the Black women have to look up to the Black man? Why can’t we look at each other as equal?
IC: if we look at each other on an equal level, what you’re going to have is a divide.
AD: As I told you, I teach at the San Francisco County Jail. Many of the women have been arrested in connection with drugs. But they are invisible to most people. People talk about the drug problem without mentioning the fact that the majority of crack users in our community are women. So when we talk about progress in the community, we have to talk about the sisters as well as the brothers.
IC: The sisters have held up the community.
AD: When you refer to the Black man, I would like to hear something explicit about Black women. That will convince me that you were thinking about sisters as well as your brothers.
As little has changed, I’m thinking Ice Cube likely wants an all-Black male team of financial experts to manage this half of a trillion dollars, right? Sure.