Lil Wayne’s allusion to Emmitt Till in his lyrics represents more than stupidity. It represents how normalized the culture of cruelty has become and how it wraps itself in a popular culture that is increasingly racist, misogynistic, and historically illiterate. This is neoliberalism’s revenge on young people in that it elevates profits over justice and the practice of moral witnessing and in doing so creates artists and other young people who mimic a racist and authoritarian politics and are completely clueless about it. Celebrity culture is the underside of the new illiteracy in America, the soft edge of fascism with its unbridled celebration of wealth, narcissism, and glamor.Read the Truthdig/Truthout article here.
Comment: Lil Wayne should know better than to mock Emmit Till. It boggles the mind that a black man can be so ignorant of his own history.
Read Giroux's article to see what he says about Emmit Till - a 14 year old boy - who was "mutilated and tortured" by white racists in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white women in Mississippi.
I like the quote that Giroux uses at the top of his article. Lil Wayne would be wise to take heed:
People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned. ... People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become, and they pay for it, very simply by the lives they lead. (James Baldwin)Onward!
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