Geraldo Rivera On Kendrick Lamar Performance: This Is The Wrong Message


Geraldo Rivera apparently refused to hold back his strong opinions on hip-hop music and its effect on African-Americans in a recent interview.

When discussing the controversial Kendrick Lamar performance from the BET Awards, the 71-year-old former talk show host claimed that hip-hop has been more detrimental to African-American youths than racism.

“This is why I say that hip-hop has done more damage to young African-Americans than racism in recent years. This is exactly the wrong message.”

Geraldo further expressed that connecting 21-year-old Dylann Roof, the alleged murderer of nine African-American people at a downtown Charleston church in South Carolina, to the recent incidents of police brutality is wrong.

“To conflate what happened in the church in South Carolina with these tragic incidents involving excessive force, use of force by cops is to equate that racist killer with these cops. It is so wrong. It is so counterproductive. It gives exactly the wrong message.”

Rivera later explained that people have “got to wake up at a certain point and understand what’s going on” — especially within a city like Baltimore, Maryland.

‘It doesn’t recognize that a city like Baltimore where, remember Freddy Gray, they’ve had a homicide a day since Freddy Gray. No one’s protesting that. Baltimore, a tiny city 7% the size of New York, has just as many murders as New York.”

The brief clip, which was shown on the FOX News program The Five, during the discussion, targeted a specific lyric from Kendrick Lamar’s song “Alright” performed as the opener of the BET Awards Sunday night.

“And we hate po-po, wanna kill us dead in the street fo sho… I’m at the preacher’s door. My knee’s getting weak and my gun might blow, but we gon’ be alright.”

Quite a few people have reacted to Geraldo Rivera’s controversial claims about hip-hop on Twitter.

This is not the first time that Geraldo Rivera has made a controversial statement referencing African-American youth. Back in March 2012, Rivera made headlines when he said that Trayvon Martin’s hoodie killed him “as surely as George Zimmerman did.”

[Image Credit: Angela Weiss/Getty Images]

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