After Jesse Jackson was caught on tape saying he wanted to cut Barack Obama’s nuts off, the reverend was criticized by everyone from Spike Lee to Nas.
Now, Jackson is finding an ally in one of his sharpest critics: David Banner.
“My feelings about [Jackson] as a person won’t change until he changes and who knows if that’ll happen,”Banner said during an interview with EUR Web, “but we should move on and not worry about his comments. We concentrate on such trivial things that are not even important. We’re at war. We’re in a recession. Jesse Jackson said something. He doesn’t literally want to cut off [Obama’s] nuts. He didn’t know the mic was on. Ok, let’s stay focused. I can honestly say that white media does that to us and we bite the hook every time.”
Despite the defense of the oft controversial Jackson, Banner also offered another bit of criticism.
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“To me, Jesse Jackson is irrelevant. Nobody in our generation really pays attention to him. As far as we’re concerned, he should be able to say whatever he wants to and we just move on.”
While many MCs have been derided for criticizing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, Banner was careful to articulate his contempt for both—making his points, though profane at times, hard to rebut.
“Young people see through all that,” he said of many older civil rights activists. “Jesse Jackson and all these people come up with all these good ideologies about what we should do as black people, but y’all have had 40 years to implement it and y’all didn’t do nothing. If anything – you’re adding to it. We’re not going to go into the dude’s personal life, but me and you could pick several examples of that.”
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At the end of the day, for Banner, it’s still about the almighty dollar.
“I don’t want to be a full-time activist. I want to be filthy rich,” he said. “I don’t want to stand up on a soap box. People don’t listen to that. People listen when you’re rich and powerful and famous. If you want me to be a leader, then let me lead yo’ ass to the record store and buy ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told.’”
