Jay-Z and New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet sat down for an in-depth conversation about a number of topics, with most of the discussion revolving around race in America.
When the rapper was asked about Donald Trump's election and if it "has revived the debate about race in America," he responded by bringing up former Clippers owner Donald Sterling. In 2014, Sterling was banned from the NBA for life and fined $2.5 million after audio surfaced of him making racist comments.
Jay-Z believes he shouldn't have been punished that way, and explained why to the Times.
There was a great Kanye West line in one of [his] songs: "Racism's still alive, they just be concealin' it." Take a step back. I think when Donald Sterling got kicked out of the NBA, I thought it was a misstep, because when you kick someone out, of course he's done wrong, right? But you also send everyone else back in hiding. People talk like that. They talk like that. Let's deal with that.
I wouldn’t just, like, leave him alone. It should have been some sort of penalties. He could have lost some draft picks. But getting rid of him just made everyone else go back into hiding, and now we can’t have the dialogue. The great thing about Donald Trump being president is now we’re forced to have the dialogue. Now we’re having the conversation on the large scale; he’s provided the platform for us to have the conversation.
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Jay-Z also addressed Colin Kaepernick in his interview, saying if he was an NFL owner, he'd sign the quarterback. He also used Kaepernick's free agency as a way to say the NBA is more politically active than the NFL.
"It's 12 people on a team. In football you have 53 people. So it's harder to get 53 people thinking the same thing. It's easier to have a conversation to get 12 people on the same page. For one. Two, [the NBA has] a great commissioner who's really open. And, you know, supports them. And you feel that. You feel like, you know, when you have someone behind you that really believe in what's right, it motivates you to do the right thing. I think those two factors show why they're much further along."
