Tupac Slams Donald Trump and Income Inequality from the Grave
By:
Tupac Shakur is once again giving eerily accurate advice from beyond the grave.
On Tuesday, MTV released never-before-seen footage of Tupac giving an interview on racism and income inequality in America all the way back in 1992. In the interview he slams 2016 GOP fruntrunner Donald Trump for his aggressive business practices and talks about the need for the U.S. to help poor and young minorities.
MTV.com - mtv.com
"You want to be successful, you want to be like Trump. Gimme gimme gimme, push push push push, step step step, crush crush crush. That’s how it all is, and it’s like nobody ever stop." — Tupac Shakur
At the time fo the interview, President George H.W. Bush was in office and the "War on Drugs" was in full swing. A program of mass incarceration would follow under the administration of President Bill Clinton. The unemployment rate for Black Americans peaked at 14.7 percent in 1992 compared to 7.2 for whites.
In January of 2016, the unemployment rate for Black Americans stood at 8.8 percent, and the unemployment rate for whites at 4.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. More than 20 years later, there is still a significant gap.
In the video, Shakur puts out a call to action for the whole country fix the income gap between Black and white Americans. He says that Black people are no longer demanding "40 Acres and a Mule" as reparations for slavery, but insists the United States should still make them whole.
MTV.com - mtv.com
"Everyone is smart enough to know we’ve been slighted and we want ours. And I don’t mean by ours 40 acres and and a mule cause we’re past that, but we need help. I mean for us to be on our own two feet, us meaning youth or us meaning black people whatever you want to take it for, for us to be on our own two feet we do need help, because we have been here, we have been a good friend if you want to make it a relationship type thing, we have been there and now we deserve our payback."
Shakur implies in the video that slavery helped the U.S. build its immense wealth, but the government doesn't want to help minorities in return.
"It’s like you got a friend that you don’t never look out for. You know, you dressed up in jewels, now Americas got jewels, they paid and everything, they lending money to everybody except us. And it’s like everybody needs a little help when they're on their way to being self-reliant”
MTV.com - mtv.com
He says it's unfair to expect Black Americans to recover from slavery without help.
“No independent person just grew up and was born independent.”
Considering Shakur was murdered in 1996 in Las Vegas, his statements about the urgency of helping poor minorities in America seem especially poignant.
"You need to help Black kids, Mexican kids, Korean kids, whatever, but it need to be real and it needs to be before we all die and then you say I made a mistake. We should have gave them some money. We really should have helped those folks. It’s going to be too late."
You can watch the full video of MTV's interview with Tupac Shakur here.
