Touch caught up with rapper Common to hear his take on race and relationships
TOUCH: This is a lyric from the track ‘Heat’ on your ‘Like Water For Chocolate’ album: "State senators, life twirls, most sell out – like a dread with a white girl." Explain please.
COMMON: Rastafarianism is a black culture. When you see dreadlocked dudes with white girls that’s like they going against what the dreadlock’s purpose was. The dreadlock was a symbol of black love and the black people gettin’ to a certain level. In America we’ve got a lot of dreadlocked dudes and all you see them with is white girls. I don’t think there’s anything the matter with somebody loving somebody from another race but it’s almost like a stereotype that if you’ve got dreadlocks you go out with a white girl. I just feel like, as black men, we do have to be aware that, yo, every time we step out with some woman it’s setting an example for our daughters and it’s also representing something for our mothers. If you can’t really love your own, how can you really love others?
TOUCH: So you don’t agree with mixed race relationships?
COMMON: I disagree with them. It's a lack of self-love. It's a problem.
TOUCH: Have you ever dated outside your race?
COMMON: Nah, not dated [giggles].
TOUCH: Have you slept with anybody outside your race?
COMMON: Yeah, I definitely have.
TOUCH: So sleeping with someone outside your race is OK but dating isn’t?
COMMON: People got their choice. I’m not telling them how to live their lives. I just tell them what I think about and what I feel about certain situations. Dealing with having sex with a white girl is something I have encountered and I’m not acting like white girls and other races are not people. We all people: children of God. But our race has been damaged. Sometimes to get back up to the level of respect and love, you’ve gotta stick with your own for a minute and build a certain amount of strength and community within yours so that other people can respect and honour your traditions.
TOUCH: How do you feel about a black person dating a mixed race person of black and white parentage?
COMMON: Ah man, if you’ve got one black parent and one white parent, then the majority of the time you considered black. People don’t look at Tiger Woods and see he’s mixed. They say he’s a black golfer, even if he say he’s something else. Look, I ain’t here to judge people’s relationships. I’m more about, "Hey black people, I see you out there talking about how you a Rastafarian, but you only wanna date white women". Is that what Rastafarianism is based on?
TOUCH: Rastafarianism has different houses with different views. Though Rastafarianism is about celebrating who you are and where you’re from, isn’t it also about loving people regardless of creed or colour?
COMMON: I don’t know all the bases of Rastafarianism, but I know that it stems from Africa and Ethiopia and really came into fruition in Jamaica during the time that the blacks were being oppressed. It was about black people paying homage to their culture, embracing their culture. So when you embrace your culture and then say, "OK, but I’m only gonna date the opposite race", to me that’s a little opposite to what you’re projecting out through your hair and the way you looking. I know you don’t agree, but I’m glad that you bringing these things up. How do you feel, as a white lady?
TOUCH: I absolutely loved your album ‘Like Water For Chocolate’ but that lyric pissed me off. I live in a very multicultural environment, maybe if I lived in America I would feel differently.
COMMON: Yeah, it definitely has something to do too with the way I was raised. I mean, not even from my parents, but from being in Chicago, a very segregated city. There is very much an enforcement of black culture where I grew up.
Common boards his plane. We agree to disagree. I tell him I respect that he speaks his mind in music. Days later our conversation continues.
TOUCH: Last time we talked about mixed race relationships…
COMMON: It was good that we talked about that. I talked about it even more after I hung up. I was talking to my team about it and they had their own views. My whole thing is that black women have been so put down – whether it’s due to the oppression of a white government or we [black men] putting our own women down. When dudes say they only gonna focus on white girls, to me, it’s like a slap in a black girl’s face. What’s ironic is when you hear this song on my new album called ‘Real People’. It deals with something almost of the same nature. I say: "Black men walking with white girls on they arms. I be mad at ’em as if I know they mums. Told to go beyond the surface, a person’s a person. When we lessen our women our conditions seem to worsen". I’m glad we got to discuss this though. Ya know, I still feel like because I’m an artist and I say certain things, I have a responsibility to let people know what I mean. I can’t claim to be perfect. I’m working too to be a better guy."
WORDS BY ELLE J SMALL
Taken from the June Edition of Touch magazine
a big celebrity who is black is not going to drop the truth on white supremacy, most of them only care about themselves...
