Rapper Ice Cube said this week that Hollywood should funnel money into black-led projects as reparations. What are the details? ...
Rapper Ice Cube said this week that Hollywood should funnel money into black-led projects as reparations.
What are the details?
On Wednesday, the rapper appeared on the popular radio show "The Breakfast Club" where he said that the entertainment industry should be giving back to the black community for appropriating and using African American culture to make money.
"Black studios is virtually all the studios who've contributed in our narrative, in our pain, in our misrepresentation, is stealing our history, and giving it to white people for over 100 years," he said.
"So I think these studios that we know and love should kick in to a studio that's ran by black people with no outside influences, and whose movies and projects are owned by those black people, those black artists and black directors and writers and people who put the project together should own the projects," he added.
Such companies, Ice Cube said, include big names such as Universal, MGM, and Warner Bros.
“I just think it's a form of reparations from the entertainment industry if they all had to invest a certain amount of money into the studio each year as payment for all the damage they've done to black people," he explained.
He concluded, "Every artist I know, every great actor or director or writer, has 10 projects they can't get made because some white people don't understand what they're trying to make. That's a shame, so we need our own place."
A 'Contract with Black America'
Ice Cube made the remarks in connection with his political activism project titled, "Contract with Black America."
The rapper crafted the proposal with an intent to distribute it to American political parties and presidential candidates ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
"Contract with Black America" stipulates that banks should invest 13.4% of bank loans into the black community as blacks make up 13.4% of the American population.
The movement's website says the point of the project is "addressing racial inequality."
Ice Cube's movement also aims to eradicate police brutality in the U.S., dismantle racism, and administer affirmative action for schools. Other tentpoles of the project include "mandatory civil rights and anti-racism classes in all elementary schools."
You can read more on his plan for action here.
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