English-Sri Lankan artist M.I.A is in hot water after making critical remarks about the Black Lives Matter movement and artists Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar.
The 40-year-old rapper and entertainer began her career making films and designing clothes in west London. It wasn’t until 2004 when she began to make her mark on the music industry. M.I.A became a smash sensation with hits like “Sunshowers” and “Galang.”
However, the talented artist may have made a major misstep in her decade spanning career. M.I.A who’s fresh off her her 2016 album Matahdatah, said in an interview with U.K.’s Evening Standard Magazine about BLM:
“It’s not a new thing to me,” M.I.A. said about Black Lives Matter’s fight for justice. “It’s what Lauryn Hill was saying in the 1990s, or Public Enemy in the 1980s. Is Beyoncé or Kendrick Lamar going to say Muslim Lives Matter? Or Syrian Lives Matter? Or this kid in Pakistan matters? That’s a more interesting question.”
Her criticism had a hint of “All Lives Matter” intertwine throughout. The Black Lives Matter movement’s founders and activists has made it clear that the movement is not saying that only Black people’s lives are valuable. The constant devaluation of Black people in poor communities, epidemic police brutality, and a justice system that has historically been unfair and unjust to Black citizens are some of the reasons for the movement. The rapper misses the point entirely.
Twitter users had to let that be known.
MIA's comments were lazy, reductive, and leaking with a lack of self-interrogation. black people don't owe non-black people anything.
— adam hamze حمزة (@adamhamz) April 21, 2016
MIA is upset Blk ppl use their platforms as they see fit, then uses HER platform to talk about us & not the ppl we "should" be talking about
— Nereyda (@TwittaHoney) April 21, 2016
this MIA thing is a good reminder that brown people need to work just as hard keeping their cousins in check as they do white folks
— anupa (@_anupa) April 21, 2016
MIA really has no clue. America didn't "allow" black folks to talk about anything. Aug 9, local news barely even cared about Mike Brown.
— Johnetta Elzie (@Nettaaaaaaaa) April 21, 2016
Since the backlash, the entertainer tries to backpedal. She takes to twitter to try to clam down her critics but it only gets worst from there:
My question was,on American platforms what do they allow you to stand up for in 2016. This has been the number 1 question for me.
— M.I.A (@MIAuniverse) April 21, 2016
Even though the musician is championing for the rights of Muslims, she admits that she is not one herself.
A#blacklivesmatter B#Muslimlivesmatter. I'm not Muslim . My criticism wasn't about Beyoncé. It's how u can say A not B right now in 2016.
— M.I.A (@MIAuniverse) April 21, 2016
She should use her platorm to do sum good for her ppl. She wasn't sayin shit wen she was on black folks songs…..hmmmm
Would you deny her the right to say , what she has said, no matter how wrong she may be??!!
MIA's comments have nothing to do with "all lives matter"
She is 100% correct. Lets see Beyonce or Kendrick fight for an oppresed race they are not a part of. Lets see if they have any empathy or passion for other minorities. MIA brought light to everyone that there are much more oppressed people who get severe lack of public bandwagon support.
Perhaps this is a stab at #blackpriviledge and a critique about melanated American pop stars pretending to be in touch with #blacklivesmatter The artist known as MIA has been a champion of the "3rd world" poor and a commentator of global injustice. Is she pointing to the relative poverty of Africans in Africa and an altogether different scale of poverty and injustice (their wars of genocide, colonials strategies of imposed famine and the tactics of depotism)? Is she comparatively saying that the American African American experience of injustice, economic marginalzation, structural poverty and government criminalization is indeed "lesser" compared to the collective pain of less developed nations? As a pop star, is she analysing the lack of philanthropy and actual participation of melanated American pop stars in both American and International campaigns for justice and change lacking? Is she saying that black pop stars are hypocrits? Is she saying that America is so full of itself it that the "lesser" social injustices of a few million (who have food, clothing, infrastructure, education, water) is not comparable to the billions suffering in the 3rd world who have relatively nothing? Razi'El Muntasir Bruce Cox Van Jones Peter Holtzman Mike Taluc
M.I.A.'s comments smack of imposing the forced role of Mammy(ism) upon African Americans. We've played that role for centuries. Recorded African American history dates back to 1617. We've historically been forced to take care others, to the detriment of ourselves. Black men have fought, bled and died in every war ever launched to found, and every war fought to maintain this nation's freedoms. African Americans have been integral to the estalishment and the growth of this nation, yet have suffered every kind of lethal discrimination on every level since we have been here.
Black people in this nation have experienced, with horror, the open rape and slaughter of black men, women and children for centuries. We have now come to an empass. The traditional American slaughter of African Americans by authorized white officials, and by others(hispanic and Asian cops who have joined in), will either cease, or there will be no peace in this land.
African Americans are not obligated to defend anyone but African Americans. Non-black Muslims, Syrians and Pakistanis included, are noted to be some of the most adamantly anti-black peoples among world cultures. Black Americans will not allow duplicitous people to use our history, culture or crisies as a shield/foil to advance their own cultural agendas, while they serupticiously undermine the progress of black Americans. We are not your mammy. We have been defending black life against terroristic aggression for a very long time, and have paid the price with centuries of misery and rivers of blood. We owe other cultures nothing.
The concept of a people of color coalition is a ruse, that only benefits those who want to use black history/culture as a legitimatizing stepping stone for their own promotion. the concept in no way benefits black American people, and for that reason we will have none of that.
Black people only have to look out for what's affecting us. Why don't she talk about what's effecting her people or the people she is mentioning. Do them same people come to black peoples aid. No case closed they have to stand up for themselves.
hint of “All Lives Matter” do you idiots know how to read.
we dont have to do shit.. everyone benefited from our backs off civil rights, white women are the biggest benefactors of Affirmative Action and the list goes on, f*ck what some white idiot thinks the black community should be doing. we built this bitch including the white hhouse, shipping, insurance, banking industries we have done enough. you are lucky we are not asking for your white ass to give us 400years of free labor in return.