Vic Mensa has never been one to hold his tongue, particularly when it comes to the injustices enveloping his hometown of Chicago or the recent Presidential election. Now that America has voted an Internet troll into office, Vic lends his thoughts on the current state of affairs.
Writing a lengthy essay for Billboard, the SAVEMONEY artist takes readers through his experience with his family and friends when Hillary Clinton lost, as well as providing advice on how to move forward as a Black man in America.
Some choice quotes:
My fight doesn’t end here no matter the outcome. I could have felt a bit more comfortable but a felt sense of security had Hillary won, because the things that I’ve been talking about this year and going hard on are the same. Those things have not changed. They’ve just manifested themselves in slavery, Jim Crow Laws, segregation and mass incarceration. Even the conversations people have about mass incarceration don’t get to the issue. They always talk about nonviolent crimes. They don’t even get the issue and how different this nation treats its prison system. It’s not just nonviolent offenders that need to be re-evaluated. It’s the entire mother—-ing system.
It’s discouraging getting on the phone with my sisters and listening to them crying because they don’t feel safe as black women in America right now. They’re not with the family. They’re not in Chicago. I got a sister in Memphis, Tennessee, right now and a sister in Rhode Island, and it hurts to hear them cry because they fear that they’ll be the victims of assault or abuse. As much as I wish I didn’t have to tell them this, I’m telling them, “Well, you know what? You should have already been on your toes. You have to be looking over your shoulders and watching your back before this election if Hillary was elected, because this nation was not built to serve your interests.”
The reason that Trump was able to empower so many people was because it was all affirmative. You know, my brother Malik Yusef is always telling me that, “The power of yes is so much more than the power of no.” So when Trump tells a lot of people, “We’re gonna make America great again. We’re gonna make America yours again. We’re gonna bring you back to your position,” he’s basically telling them, “Yes, white supremacy is the answer” to their white nation. Our whole f—ing approach was, “No, that’s wrong. No, that’s not right.” We can’t do that anymore. We’ve seen how that’s not powerful enough. We need to unify and decide what it is that we really believe in — that’s what we need to fight for. We can’t just fight against injustice. We gotta fight for justice.
The entire article can be read here.
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