The recent shooting of nine people in a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina has reignited the discussion about race in America once it became clear that the shooter's motives were racially motivated. There have been calls for the government of South Carolina to remove the Confederate Flag from the state house and individuals from politics, entertainment and music are chiming in on the issue. Chicago rapper Lupe Fiasco has never been one to shy away from hot button topics in society, whether he is addressing them in his music or publicly, and the Tetsuo & Youth rapper took the time to write a lengthy open letter to the concept of white supremacy in a series of Instagram posts.
Fiasco uses three pictures of the alleged shooter Dylann Roof that have circulated on the web, putting the Supreme logo over the photos as a sort of irony and then writes an extensive message about interconnectivity, human collaboration and the concept of regularity vs. supremacy.
Lupe uses the example of a computer to show just how global the world and how cultures are constantly mixing together.
"Sure Steve Jobs was white. But the guy who built the computer was probably Chinese. And the girl who wrote the programs for the computer is probably from Mumbai. And the raw materials that were used to make it where probably first pulled out of the ground by somebody in South Africa. And if you take this highly collaborated upon piece of high technology to an indigenous tribe in the jungles of Brazil they'd probably use it as a boat paddle."
Read the first Instagram post below and don't miss the rest of his thoughts in the second and third pictures.