this is the full section of the interview
The news, you mean?
Everything. I read the description of an empath and I think I fit the description pretty well. It’s about absorbing people’s feelings.
But does that mean we shouldn’t speak up when people, even good ones, do bad things or express hurtful ideas? When I was doing research for this interview — this is a slightly awkward question.
You can ask me anything.
Okay, thank you. I know this is maybe a weird pivot, but I think it’s relevant. When I was doing research for this interview I came across an article from after you’d gone to Israel, where the Israeli press was linking you to Louis Farrakhan and his alleged anti-Semitism and it seemed that you were being criticized for defending him rather than denouncing anti-Semitism. I don’t know if those reports were accurate, but isn’t it valid to criticize the hurtful idea in an instance like that? Even if you respect the person who holds that idea?
Absolutely. But I never made a statement about Louis Farrakhan — ever. What you’re talking about happened in Palestine. At the time, the working title of my album was
Saviours’ Day — which is a holiday for the Nation of Islam but also my birthday. So I’d gone to PalestineIn a press conference prior to a 2008 show in Tel Aviv, Badu expressed solidarity with Palestinian rappers who use hip-hop as a “form of liberation,” and defended Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, Million Man March leader, and alleged anti-Semite.
He is “not an anti-Semite,” said Badu. “He loves all people.” and journalists asked me, “Do you believe in Louis Farrakhan? Do you follow him?” Sure I do. I’ll follow anyone who has positive aspects. He single-handedly changed half of the Nation of Islam to clean eating, clean living, caring for their families. He has flaws — like any man — but I’m not responsible for that
. I said I’ve appreciated what he’s done for a lot of black Americans. I mean, I’m not Muslim, I’m not Christian, I’m not anything; I’m an observer who can see good things and bad things. If you say something good about someone, people think it means that you’ve chosen a side. But I don’t choose sides. I see all sides simultaneously.
That’s not something most of us are good at.
We’re not, and I’m okay with that. I’m also okay with anything I had to say about Louis Farrakhan. But I’m not an anti-Semitic person. I don’t even know what anti-Semitic was before I was called it. I’m a humanist. I see good in everybody. I saw something good in Hitler.
Come again?
Yeah, I did. Hitler was a wonderful painter.
No, he wasn’t! And even if he was, what would his skill as a painter have to do with any “good” in him?
Okay, he was a terrible painter. Poor thing. He had a terrible childhood. That means that when I’m looking at my daughter, MarsBadu’s daughter with enigmatic rapper Jay Electronica. She also has another daughter, Puma, with the West Coast rapper the D.O.C. , I could imagine her being in someone else’s home and being treated so poorly, and what that could spawn. I see things like that. I guess it’s just the Pisces in me.
I’m perfectly willing to accept that you might be operating on a higher moral plane than I am, but I think going down the route of “Hitler was a child once too” is maybe turning the idea of empathy into an empty abstraction.
Maybe so. It doesn’t test my limits — I can see this clearly. I don’t care if the whole group says something, I’m going to be honest. I know I don’t have the most popular opinion sometimes.
But don’t you think that someone as evil as Hitler, who did what he did, has forfeited the right to other people’s empathy?
Why can’t I say what I’m saying? Because he did such terrible things?
Well, yes. But it’s also disheartening to hear you say that at a time, like now, when racism and anti-Semitism are so much in the air. Why would you want to risk putting fuel on that fire?
You asked me a question. I could’ve chosen not to answer. I don’t walk around thinking about Hitler or Louis Farrakhan. But I understand what you’re saying: “Why would you want to risk fueling hateful thinking?” I have a platform, and I would never want to hurt people. I would never do that. I would never even imagine doing that. I would never even want a group of white men who believe that the Confederate flag is worth saving to feel bad. That’s not how I operate.
I appreciate that. But I really struggle with the idea of how much we’re supposed to make an effort to understand or have empathy for people who have dangerously backwards or hateful thinking. You want to take the moral high ground, but sometimes that also feels the same as ceding territory.
You got that Pisces in you, that two-fish.
I am a Pisces, actually.
I thought so. So am I. One fish is swimming upstream, one’s swimming downstream. We are all living in a cognitive-dissonance reality. We want to live a certain way or do a certain thing, and we don’t because we are emotionally attached to how the group thinks. The hive mentality takes over. But you know what’s right in your mind and your heart, and if you’re strong enough to detach from the hive then sometimes, just sometimes, you may be able to do the right thing.
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I understand the reporter bringing up what he did...either because he's a jew or because he answers to jews. Can't see anybody else reacting one way or the other to anything she said in the interview.
Hitler is the bogey man for jews, but through their influence in the media they have Black people as upset about this as they are. Simon says.
I brought up founding fathers of this country owning plantations and human beings and wondered whether you'd be so quick to raise eyebrow to somebody call them great men.
. This is a reach for somebody who as she said likes to find the good in people,and to be fake deep. Why would a self respecting black person REACH to defend a mass murderer,who would've gladly wiped her people off the face of the earth too and thought his people were superior? Somebody reaching to find something nice to say about somebody whos evilness far outweighs their talent as a run of the mil painter,is questionable. If she was white you guys wouldn't have the same energy.
THATS MY SISTA
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