Azealia Banks
Azealia Banks is known for being vocal when it comes to issues that are important to her. She’s been making headlines recently because of her beef with Iggy Azalea and T.I. and her thoughts on how hip-hop is being compromised by cultural smudging. Now she has a bigger mission than hip-hop: fighting to get reparations for black people whose ancestors were slaves. She calls out corporations who have benefited from slavery and believes that they owe the current generation of black people money because of the generational poverty the slave trade caused.
In a series of tweets she wrote:
“I wonder where the descendants of the ‘DeWolf’ family are today. they should all have their houses burned and their finances seized. This generation of young back kids needs to make a CONCERTED effort to seek out living descendants of major slave trading families. They Owe us Money. Jews and Native Americans all got reparations because they organized. Please don’t let my ‘beef’ with hip-hop distract from what we need to be focusing on. We are owed MAJOR F**KING BUCKS kids, MAJOR BUCKS. Aetna, New York Life Insurance Company, and JP Morgan and Chase all have deep connections to the Slave trade, and are still holding on to that capital. They used the money they made from our flesh and blood to fund the Industrial revolution. Please please please do not get distracted with reality tv and rap music and fashion and all that other dumb sh*t. We are the children of the people who perished in the name of modern capitalism and we deserve a piece of that f**king pie. I would give up my music career to fight for reparations. To even the score once and for all. ITS MY MONEY, AND I WANT IT NOWWWWW!!!!!!”
She also tweeted links to related articles about the issue.
A member of the DeWolf family, James DeWolf Perry, responded to Banks’ tweets, saying that he works toward educating white people on the issue and that the money they earned from the slave trade was spent within the first two generations. He says he agrees with Banks on the need for reparation.
