Killer Mike has been one of the most outspoken rappers in an election cycle that was full of stars making their voices heard. And that didn’t change just because the election is over. On the talk show The Real, the Bernie Sanders supporter and Run The Jewels member gave his analysis of how Donald Trump became president-elect.
Mike told the hosts that Trump won because poor, black voters were angry at the Democratic Party and outnumbered by poor, angry white voters.
“People who look like all the people on this panel–black, brown, and all types of hues in between–I think that we have been used by a party to the liberal side that once enacted, and once in office, has not enacted policy that was reflective of stuff that would bring our communities up. So I think poor people got angry, and I think that there just happen to be, by this country, more poor angry white people.”
Mike also drew connections between poor Southern whites during the Civil Rights Movement who were divided along racial lines to avoid a class-based political movement and Trump’s modern-day supporters.
“[Poor white people] were treated as badly as any black worker,” he said. “But simply because an imaginary line of race got put there and they could say that ‘I’m superior to this person,’ they never joined the black worker and fought for better conditions for them all.”
Mike isn’t the only member of RTJ who is taking action on the day after the election. His partner-in-rhyme El-P says he donated $5,000 to Planned Parenthood in anticipation of a new fight over women’s health under Trump’s presidency.
https://twitter.com/therealelp/status/796397697179746304
For more on how the music world reacted to last night’s results, check out Lady Gaga’s protest outside of Trump Tower and our round-up of the way that stars responded on social media.
