RZA would be correct … Gawker interviewed WuTang rapper/producer and Staten Island native RZA about the recent death of Eric Garner and subsequent non-indictment of the police officers who killed him. Here are some of the best excerpts: RZA on what went wrong with the police’s interaction with Eric Garner in the first place Do you think the cops were acting aggressively? RZA: Those gentlemen were wrong — the cop had a utility belt of options for different escalating scenarios. He had a stick, pepper spray, he had his physical training … but to jump up on him? It looked like a gang fight, and that’s totally wrong. The cops had other options — I’ve been pepper sprayed before, it’s 100% efficient. You gonna chill out. It’s a chill pill. So the problem is that the situation escalated to chokehold and eventual death? RZA: The real problem I have with it is that we got the guy [police officer Daniel Pantaleo] red-handed, in HD quality. And not just the one cop, all those cops should have been indicted. Those are the guys who give us the non-value of black life. RZA on the non-indictment of the police At this point is there misplaced trust in authority or feelings that the system won’t work? RZA: The system works but only in certain cases. When you run a red light, the camera light flashes and takes a picture of your plate. You will get a ticket, you will get charged. Because there’s a picture, whether it shows your face or not. Here we have a man who was killed and there is a clear image of it, but there’s no indictment. So there’s clearly an issue with competence, due process and maybe even equality? RZA: When you see it on camera, when we get a grand jury — white, black, aliens, and not one person says ‘indict’? No one sees the injustice? It’s not that I fully blame the cops. I played a cop on TV, I spent a year walking around telling people: “I’m a cop.” But it’s becoming like the people in uniform have criminal personalities and criminal minds — and they’re not embarrassed by it. They find no fault in what they’re doing, a spade is a spade yo. The video is an indictment in itself. RZA: It’s different when there’s HD quality video going along with it. This generation is questioning a lot of what they’re taught. A black man being targeted is nothing new. With Mike Brown, the video is questionable but it’s beyond a shadow of a doubt with what happened with Eric Garner. Even with all our tech advances we are actually devolving. When Rodney King got done up by those cops, the video was grainy and they got away with it. But now? Now we have clean quality, up-close shots and the people who run the system are still saying no, there is no crime here. RZA on prison being the new slavery: There’s that stat: 1 in 3 black men will go to prison in their lifetime compared with 1 in 17 white men. RZA: Exactly, slavery just meant that 3 to 5 million Americans were providing free labor for the entire country. After the civil war, they were freed but they filled the jails with blacks, and now they working again. Seven out of nine Wu-Tang members have been in jail [RZA has been arrested 15 times] and they’ve said, they get 50 cents a day for their work. Where’s the profit going? They’re building highways, running industries, and you come to find these institutions are privately owned business. It’s same thing all over again. He spoke a lot of really powerful truth in that one. Continue reading
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