In the light of recent events RZA took the time out to sit down with Vanity Fair to reflect on the Mike Brown and Eric Garner verdicts. “I think we all—in America—have an identity crisis.” He even goes on to say that the value of a dog is more than the life of a black man. “It puzzles me that the brutal behavior inflicted by the men we look to serve and protect us does not affect the hearts of their community.” Check out the full interview after the jump.
How old is your son?
He’s 19 years old.
Have you had conversations with him about police?
Yes. I always told him about the way to speak with police. You say, “Yes, sir,” or, “No, sir.” First of all, they’re grown men. So most of the cops he comes across are going to be a senior. You have to respect that, if he’s my son, he’s going to respect his seniors. Answer their questions first, then, if you have a question, ask it. You can ask any question you want: “What’s the problem, sir?” I always told my son that he can ask any question that he’s asked.
This was after Trayvon Martin, we had a big talk. We took a long walk, maybe a mile walk. I said, “You are one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. You’re nowhere like your dad!” He’s the nicest guy. He goes to church every Sunday. He gets up every day to help, that’s what he does. But he has dreads, and he’s six foot four. And he has a deep voice. So I told him, “Look, you may be a mistaken identity.” I told him, “Wear button-up shirts. Keep yourself looking clean and refined, so you can have a prestigious look about you. Because if you come in with baggy clothes and the heavy jacket, and stuff like that, you’re going to look like you have some weed to sell. That’s the stereotype that has come before you, so until that’s lifted, you have to be careful.”
And he is careful. In his church, it’s like maybe three black kids, and he’s one. He teaches there, and he’s teaching 90 percent white brothers and sisters. Every day, if you come to my house, it’s white kids in my house. Because that’s my neighborhood. They’re coming in and watching movies, they laugh. They say, “Hey Mr. Diggs.” I say, “Hey, no cigarettes, no liquor in my house. I don’t know what you guys do, but these are the rules in my house.” But it’s a delicate situation, bro. We are striving for a better tomorrow.
What were you feeling, when you watched the news?
The value of a man’s life has been totally reduced. It has never been even put at the proper value, when it comes to a black man. But even life itself, bro. We see it on the TV, because now we have technology and people can capture it with their cell phones, and the news it making it the news of the day, so we see it. But we have an old-school mentality of what you can do, as a cop, and how someone already considered a criminal, even when he’s not committing a violent crime, or a real crime. Selling a cigarette is not really a crime, standing on the corner is not a real crime, at the end of the day.
But I am very moved by the congregating of multiple races, to speak out for this cause. It’s very moving, and it’s reminiscent of the 60s, when young people got involved with the civil-rights movement. I’m glad that we recognize that it’s an American problem.
There’s this interplay, between people who have always known police brutality is a problem, and those who are just discovering it because of the videos and news.
I think it will lead to a better day. If every day, you walked out with a smudge on your face, and I keep telling you about it, eventually you’re going to want to wipe it off—unless if that smudge is part of your face. So, if this country, and those of us who live here, are not like we stereotype each other to be, then let’s not be that way. Malcolm X charged the white man as being the biggest murderer and liar, and whites charged blacks with being criminals, or less than human. O.K., so let’s disprove it.
What was your sense of the cops and prosecutors in Staten Island?
When we were younger, one of our buddies was choked out by a cop, and there was a little riot in Park Hill. But it was a black cop, who choked out a black kid. You hear a lot of Wu-Tang lyrics, and we name cops and jobs. We put them in our songs, because we faced them. Like [Inspectah Deck] said [on “C.R.E.A.M.”], “We got stickup kids, corrupt cops, and crack rocks.” You would think that it has gotten better, and it has gotten better on Staten Island. You used to hear about riots in the high school, with white kids fighting black kids. Now, it’s different.
I always liked cops, because my DJ was a cop, since I was 14-years-old. And he was the first one who showed me how to sell weed [laughs]. I hope his mother doesn’t hear about that! At 21, he became a cop, and I became the one cops were looking for. But our friendship remained, and through him, I learned what a cop was like. My brother’s wife is a cop, 20 years on the job. My first cousin, who I grew up with, is an officer as well. My father-in-law, his wife’s son is a cop.
A cop just wants to make it home to his family, just like a criminal. But in this case, with Eric Garner, there is not a criminal here. This looks more like the ego and frustration of a man—forget that this guy was a cop. Take the uniform off. If you take the uniform off of those guys, it looks like a neighborhood beat down. It looked like a black guy got jumped by a bunch of white guys. It looks like this gang jumped that guy. Then you put the uniform back on, and you’re like, “Oh, these are cops doing it.” But nobody there took heed, or had the compassion, that a cop should have. No one said, “This man can’t breathe, can we do some C.P.R.? Can we check up on this dude?”
There seemed to be a sense of a deficit in humanity.
Let me say this to you, I was watching the news with my wife, and my she’s tearing up. And then a commercial comes on, with the saddest music you could hear, and then they start showing faces of dogs, saying we have to do something to help these dogs. That fucked me up. Help these dogs? I’m a vegetarian. My favorite part in Mockingjay is when [Jennifer Lawrence’s character] looked into the animal’s eye and didn’t shoot the arrow. But they should have put a commercial on with young black kids. That’s what we need—not one over in Africa, one right here, that’s being locked up or beaten up. I was thinking, “Man, what timing, for a commercial like this.” A dog can get more compassion than a human being.
Do you really think things have improved, since when you were growing up?
I mean, in this case, it didn’t look better . . . In the old days, you could think about a kid who wanted to be a kid. You thought it was something special. People used to invite the cops in for cookies and milk in the old days. And that change isn’t just in my neighborhood, that isn’t happening in the white neighborhoods either anymore. I saw a man on Fox News, a white older man, and he said he got pulled over by cops [who] are talking to him like he’s a kid. That can make a man upset. He was a 50-year-old, grown-ass, tax-paying man. It’s like, “Take it easy here, kid. Don’t talk to me like all of a sudden you’re walking over and we’re supposed to be totally submissive.” You’re supposed to be submissive to the law, not the person . . . You know how many cops have lied to me?
What are some solutions?
When you look at the two communities, if we are to have cops come from our own community, the main thing we have to do is get the guy who cares. Not the guy who was a nerd, and then becomes a tough-ass when he gets his badge. That happened a lot in my neighborhood, and then people are like, “Him? He’s a cop?” He wouldn’t get respect, and then he would feel like he had to show his gun to have authority. You also don’t want the bully, you don’t want to put a badge on him. You want the pragmatic guy, who was doing good in school, in exercise, and has a good sense of judgment. A guy who has the power to whip ass, but only resort to that when necessary. But that’s not the kind of people they had when I was living on Staten Island—sometimes there would be cops that were out of shape, or people who never had a natural authority about them. They just started recruiting people who weren’t qualified to be a cop. They didn’t have that natural ability. We’re pulling from the wrong tree.
via vanity fair
