Every single one of the performers on those stages have been wealthy for twenty plus years. They are hardly “hoodlums”. All of them are looong divorced from their poor roots in the ‘hood. Many of them have a legacy of assistance to the communities and people they left behind, and many of them took as many of their friends and hangers on as they could with them, as they rose to the top.

I would wager that the music industry (and rap music in particular) has lifted more Black people (especially the kind of black people who have been written off as worthless by these same outraged white people) out of poverty, which is more than Ms. Swain has ever done! The question isn’t what’s the point of these worthless people on this platform, but to the questioner: What have they done to make life better for anyone but white people?

See, this is why I don’t accept respectability politics. These are exactly the kind of people who have been told all their lives to lift themselves up by their bootstraps, and having done just that, (made a way out of no way), are still being vilified as worthless “hoodlums” by those same damn people.

Fuck every one of them, and I mean that sincerely.