Lupe Fiasco Publishes Letter to White Supremacy After Charleston Shooting

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.

 A letter. Part 1 Of 3 Dear White Supremacy, First of all you are not really that supreme. While throughout history White Supremacy it must be admitted you have achieved some very dominant positions. These positions have been gained mostly through force or some biological agent such as disease that did a lot of the dirty work for you in advance. I mean anybody can use force on an unarmed populous and anybody can have smallpox. Not judging, just wanted to point out that having a disease that native folks aren't immune to because they've never seen it doesn't make you strategically smart or tactically superior, just kind of sick. And these dominant positions don't really stand up to the test of time that long either. There is nothing about you biologically or physically that denotes an innate mode of supremacy. For that matter there is also nothing about you psychologically, philosophically, cognitively, academically, socially, architecturally, culturally or even financially that signifies a higher position above any other group. And to be diplomatic there is nothing about you that denotes innate inferiority as well. So what you really are is something in the middle. You are regular. White Regularity is congruent to all other forms of regularity i.e. Black, Brown, Etc etc. But in regularity there is room for differences and this is where White Regularity shines! Each group gets the same essential universals. Dance, food, music, etc. and it must be admitted that the White Regularity take on these universal institutions has been unbelievably impressive and a great addition to the total world culture. I mean spaghetti and meatballs, Romeo & Juliet, Coldplay, The Tuxedo, lighter that air travel are all world class additions to the collective bucket but they are no less or more impressive than every other regular groups take on the universals either. And if we really wanted to get analytical every invention is built on inspiration from a previously existing invention so the claim of "The Supreme 1st" to do something is highly debatable and except for a few exceptions, impossible! All things human aren't born from a supreme overlord solely working in isolation.

A photo posted by Lupe Fiasco (@lupefiasco) on Jun 20, 2015 at 7:33pm PDT