Russell Simmons recently sat in the hot chair on The O'Reilly Factor to discuss some of the fallout from the grand jury decisions in Ferguson and Staten Island. Bill O'Reilly didn't go easy on him but Simmons stuck to his guns and made some great points on national television. As is usual on the show, O'Reilly and his guest get into it, The Huffington Post reports.
The host starts off by reminding Simmons that he and his Fox News cronies publicly stated that they were disturbed by what happened to Eric Garner, the 43-year-old African American who was choked by police in July and died of a heart attack shortly thereafter. The police officer who put a chokehold on Garner was not indicted.
O'Reilly argued that there was a bigger problem at play though.
"The bigger issue that you are not acknowledging is that the astronomical crime rate among young black men -- violent crime -- drives suspicion and hostility," he said about police officers in black communities. "You won't acknowledge it, Russell. You won't acknowledge it."
The two went back and forth on issues like drugs and whether selling them is a violent crime (O'Reilly yes, Simmons no) before the rapper brought up an interesting point.
"You know what's interesting, Bill? When you talk about the violence in the black community, or the 50 or 60 sometimes 70 kids who are shot in one week in Chicago it goes like that [snaps fingers]...and when you talk about the missing white girl from Brooklyn, it goes on for a month. Every single week, and it's true, there is violence in those communities and what we're doing about it is negligible."
O'Reilly and Simmons faced off over the summer when Bill took aim at the sexual nature of Beyoncé's videos.
