Actor O’shea Jackson, playing his father, Ice Cube, in the 2015 movie “Straight Outta Compton.”
Ice Cube, in 1989, was a black teenage rap star, sick of doing all of the work and getting none of the money.
2016: Ain’t gotta change a word.
But I thought we had worked so damn hard this time. We elected our learned, eloquent black President. Stunning as hell. We accomplished so much as a whole group of people. Messy America passed inclusive laws about voting rights, equal marriage, women’s rights to their own bodies… healthcare was even making progress. I thought Obama’s back-to-back wins, despite a hateful Congress, meant something had changed the selfish, fearful hearts of many white people. Yeah, I thought. Silly-ass me.
Everything prolly alright. I must be trippin’.
—O’Shea’s next sentence, as ‘Cube.
He knows better, but it can’t really be real. He can’t be getting fucked over by his friend and manager. His whole reality on that tour and the bus.
Sorry, but you trippin’, Felicia.
Standing cold and naked in the hallway.
You think we woulda ever left thousands of white Americans to starve and drown on their roofs in New Orleans? Bush was scared to even get out the airplane. Not his people.
You think we’d let black cops shoot white people in the back, killing them, over and over and over and over and over? How about murdering that 12 year-old black child playing alone in the park, Tamir Rice? Not Guilty. Not Guilty. Not Guilty. Not Guilty. How about Walter Scott? Got kids. Pulled over for a broken tail light, unarmed. Shot dead in the back by a white cop we refused to convict. All on tape. And a hundred more…
But let’s get that ugly white boy terrorist who shot up a black bible meeting in a church a cotdamn Whopper on the way to the police station, after he pumped over 60 bullets into eleven black people, killing nine. Kid was hungry. Takes it outta ya, killing old people praying in a church.
So, we never got better. We got freakishly worse.
This year can’t even be real life.
Crude, racist, sexist, hateful, dumb as a box of hammers white man just got made President. 2016. Filling his cabinet with billionaire science-deniers, public education haters, gaybashers, healthcare and social program killers. Oh, and the orange pussy-grabbing clown thanked “The Blacks” who didn’t show up to vote.
The majority of that bratty reality star’s supporters are going to suffer terribly under his regime. But, hey, they got themselves a white guy.
Aw, shit. Here we go again.
—O’Shea as Ice Cube before his face hits the sidewalk, by a cop’s hand.
How low can we go? Beyond my imagination.
A&E is producing a reality show about KKK families.
Big article in the NYT. Like it’s the new normal or some shit.
Yo, Dre. I got something to say.
I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. — Fannie Lou Hamer