Killer Mike on Race Relations

As mankind moves forward in an age where the globe is increasingly interconnected, society lags behind on financial, social and racial equality, not to mention humanitarian issues. As a nation, we look to the federal government for answers on how to solve our problems, when the first process of change begins in our communities.

Hip-hop as a “cultural and social justice machine,” offers a model for community engagement, according to Michael Render aka “Killer Mike,” a hip-hop artist and social activist.

“Hip-hop started in November of 1973 as a peace treaty between gangs in the South Bronx. The park jams were an alternative to violence and an artistic response to poverty,” said Killer Mike at the second installment of “Hip-Hop Speaker Series” at MIT titled “Race Relations in the U.S.”

According to Killer Mike, the movement began as an extension of nationalism and civil rights for African Americans, Latinos and whites who used hip-hop as a vehicle to push the message of protest. They used their shared resentments to be organizers or co-organizers of the community park jams which spread to neighborhoods across the country.

For Killer Mike, the question was how to use these principles of community collaboration to affect policy change on a local level, where the impact is most tangible.

“If we want to change Ferguson where 70 percent of the African-American population is not represented in the police force, we need more African Americans as lawyers, attorneys and professionals behind desks,” said Killer Mike, whose father was a police officer.

His suggestion brings another facet of the bigger problem: education and upward mobility for the lower class, something which Killer Mike says the No Child Left Behind Act failed at.

Speaking to a room full of students and artists, he said the “key to solving these issues has less to do with politics and the invention of tools and more to do with encouraging people to have a racially, culturally and socially diverse circle of friends. These differences are what make us culturally stronger.”

Before we are Irish, Spanish or Indian, we are Americans who are woven into one fabric around the “proverbial campfire” which is the rights promised to us all in the constitution.

“As intelligent people, we should reject constantly picking sides and form an alternative that will radically change the racial dynamic. But that only happens if people like me engage with people like you,” said Killer Mike.

Killer Mike instructed everyone to go and mentor a student from a different background in the public school system.

“This is the best serum for change in the community,” he said.