thread:

angela davis, a political activist and black panther icon sat down with ice cube in 1991 to discuss race, politics, rap, and more.

(personally i believe hip hop needs intergenerational conversations like this now more than ever. between rappers and revolutionaries)

IC: Let me tell you something. Well we have kids looking at television, hearing the so-called leaders in this capitalist system saying: it’s not all right to be poor - if you’re poor you’re nothing – get more. And they say to the women you got to have your hair this way, your

eyes got to be this way... What you have is Black people wanting to be like white people, not realizing that why people want to be like Black people. So the best thing to do is to eliminate that type of thinking. You need black men who are not looking up to the white man,...

who are not trying to be like the white man

AD: What about the women? You keep talking about black men. I’d like to hear you say: black men and women.

IC: Black people.

AD: I think you often exclude your sisters from your thought process. We’re never gonna get anywhere if we’re not together

IC: Of course. But the black man is down

Ad: The black woman’s down too.

Ic: but the black women can look up to the black man until we get up.

Ad: well why should the black women have to look up to the black man? Why can’t we look at each other as equal?

Ic: if we look at each other on an equal level, what you’re going to have is a divide.

AD: as I told you I teach at the San Francisco County Jail. Many of the women

have been arrested in connection with drugs. But they are invisible to most people. People talk about the drug problem without mentioning the fact that the majority of crack users in our community are women. So when we talk about progress in the community, we have to talk about

the sisters as well as the brothers.

ic: the sisters have held up the community

Ad: when you refer to the black man, I would like to hear something explicit about black women. That will convince me that you were thinking about sisters as well as your brothers.

only clip i could find .