TikTok & How Policy Affects Culture
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It's not a ban. It's a divestment strategy. Oh, my God, babies. It's a ban. Let's just call it what it is. The bill they passed in the Senate, which is headed to Biden's desk right now, is doomed to fail as it has no legs. And in some ways, that is why I am less concerned with this attempt to ban the app than I have been with past attempts.

Let's go all the way back to 2020 when Trump wanted to ban the app. And that was a flat out ban. He said, we need to ban the app. We are getting too many users on here too quickly. We can't control the information. Shut it down. That, of course, failed. And TikTok became a huge success with 170 million Americans using the app and 7 million businesses using the app. Now,

Now, since 2020, Congress has gotten a little bit more wily about how they would institute a ban, understanding that saying, hey, we're going to ban TikTok is deeply unpopular. They've put forth this vision of a divestment strategy. And in this most recent iteration, they're even giving the, quote, Chinese owners of TikTok nine months to divest with the possibility of a one-time 90-day extension. Now, the problem is...

TikTok doesn't have Chinese owners. We're going to get into that in a minute, but that's the reason why I'm not too scared about this law. Our government is terrible at enforcing laws and especially terrible at enforcing or applying regulations or change orders or restrictions on businesses.

So I have some hope that the ineptitude and apathy of Congress will play a role in Congress feeling like they did a thing and they will not spend the time, money or resources to defend their shitty, poorly written, rushed out bill. The legislation on Biden's desk right now is completely out of touch with the reality of app users.

who owns TikTok in the first place, and just seeks to shout data privacy with no substance and no equal call for other social media platforms to similarly commit to protecting U.S. users' data.

Furthermore, Congress has given no credit to the $2 billion TikTok's Singaporean CEO and U.S.-based team has spent moving U.S. user data to storage facilities in Texas, which are overseen by the American company Oracle as part of what was called Project Texas.

They did this on their own time and on their own dime to show good faith in meeting Congress's concerns about the CCP having access to spy on Americans with real protective action, something that Meta has never offered to do. And this is the crux of my aggravation with the whole TikTok ban situation. It has deep roots in nonsense, misinformation, and congressional ignorance to what TikTok even is.

A year ago, when a geriatric Congress hauled the CEO of TikTok in to show him videos of dangerous challenges from YouTube that they had misidentified as TikToks, I was in the room.

It was clear at that point that the reps did not care to engage in a good faith conversation or have their concerns addressed, but rather wanted to droll on about kids these days and throw unveiled xenophobic barbs at Shou Chu, the Singaporean CEO of TikTok. The evidence presented at this hearing on TikTok's danger was inaccurate at best and manufactured at worst.

I still remain suspicious how Florida Republican Kat Kamek was able to find a TikTok no one else had ever seen. This TikTok that was created just days before the hearing that featured a gun and some Comic Sans font text boxes that said, I'm going to shoot the chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. Ha ha. With the username I am retarded.

This is Republican boomer humor at best. The video had practically zero views. How did she even find this TikTok? This unicorn piece of evidence that TikTok is dangerous. Now, I'm not saying that she did.

But it certainly feels like Rep Kat Kamik may be a little bit closer to the creator of that TikTok than she was willing to admit. At that same time, Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat who, in my opinion, is just too horny for unbridled government surveillance, was presenting the next iteration of a TikTok ban that he was calling the Restrict Act, which the public quickly recognized as Patriot Act 2.0.

Mark and his buddies, including my senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, even went so far as to do podcast tours, invited creators like myself to the Senate to meet with their teams, where I was told, well, if you knew what I knew, you'd be on my side. You just don't know about the national security implications, but if I could tell you, you would believe me.

They answered all of my questions on how a ban on TikTok or the Restrict Act would actually protect American citizens' data and privacy with the equivalent of, trust me, bro. The Restrict Act was torn to shreds online by creators and even right-wing small government folks. And slowly, the Restrict Act crawled its way back up the tightly wound ass Mark Warner shat it out of.

A year to the day later, the House led by Representative Gallagher came up with a new new plan to ban TikTok, which quickly passed the House, though has languished in the Senate for the last several weeks.

This iteration of a TikTok ban would have given the app just six months to divest or be banned and offered zero data privacy protection. It also would have given the president the right to leverage the FBI to survey apps and ban them based on FBI reporting and presidential will alone. No thanks.

Mark Pocan, a Democratic rep and TikToker who opposed this version of the TikTok ban, said, quote, We need to address data privacy across all social networks, including American companies like Meta and X, through meaningful regulation that protects freedom of expression and doesn't just single out one platform. Worth noting, after Gallagher's bill passed the House, he resigned from Congress to take a job at a private spy firm.

He left Congress on April 19th to join Planeteer, the data analytics and security firm that was started by super ghoul and Republican donor and one of the first investors of Facebook, Peter Thiel.

The government just couldn't get the TikTok ban itch scratched until last night when at about midnight, the Senate passed a new flavor TikTok ban, which was couched in a must-pass spending package that gives $96 billion to foreign wars. This divest or ban bill gives ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, just nine months to divest with the possibility of a one-time 90-day extension. But ByteDance doesn't own TikTok.

This isn't some very simple transaction, and Congress just doesn't seem to care about that. TikTok is actually run by a limited liability company based in Los Angeles and Singapore. 60% of ByteDance is owned by global institutional investors like the Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, and Susquehanna International Group, headed by Jeffrey Yass, the richest man in Philadelphia.

20% of the firm is owned by one person of Chinese descent, the founder of TikTok, who at this point has basically retired from any office. And the remaining 20% is owned by employees around the world.

Three of the company's five board members are Americans. And the two non-Americans on the TikTok board are Rubo Liang, ByteDance's chairman and CEO who lives in Singapore, and Neil Shen, who works for the American capital company Sequoia, though he is based in Hong Kong.

So who then has to divest? Is it just the founder who happens to be of Chinese descent, though is not a member of the CCP and has not been accused of any crimes, and who even stepped down as ByteDance's CEO to basically retire off his TikTok invention? Should he have to divest from TikTok, which has never even operated in mainland China? Or should the 20% of employees have to divest from TikTok? What about the 60% of global investors?

What about the three Americans that sit on the board? Are you starting to see what nonsense this is? TikTok is expected to challenge the measure, setting up a high stakes and potentially lengthy legal battle that could go on until TikTok isn't even fun anymore. TikTok's legal challenges will test TikTok's argument that any law that seeks to ban or forced divestment would violate the free speech rights of millions.

I've personally been reached out to by a lawyer who is seeking to put together a class action lawsuit of creators, creators versus the U.S. government for loss of wages and First Amendment violations. I'm not sure that I'm going to join this class action lawsuit, so I'm not going to give you any more details about it or how to join it until we vet it and make sure that it's legit.

And there's even a third group of people who are considering challenging a TikTok ban. Governors of states with their attorney generals. Could the governor of a state drive a challenge of this bill right up to the Supreme Court to decide? States could sue on grounds of undue economic harm to their residents.

TikTok puts $24 billion into the GDP of the United States annually. There are 7 million small businesses on the app, and 170 million Americans use the app for learning, community building, and information gathering. A blackout on what has become in some ways a public utility, especially following reporting that one-third of Americans get their news and emergency alerts on TikTok, could maybe work.

Maybe the states can save us. And we do have some history to look to to build that state case. Let's look to Montana and how they tried to ban the app for how states might organize to protect the app.

From NPR, U.S. District Judge Donald Malloy, when overturning Montanans' law to ban the app, said Montana's TikTok ban oversteps state power and likely violates the First Amendment. In May, TikTok sued the state over the law, arguing that it amounts to illegal suppression of free speech. Lawyers for TikTok argued that the national security threat raised by officials in Montana was never supported by solid evidence. And

And Malloy, the judge overseeing the case, was skeptical of the ban in an October hearing of the lawsuit. He pointed out that TikTok users voluntarily provide their personal data, despite state officials suggesting that the app was stealing the data of users. He said state officials justified the Montana ban under a paternalistic argument. You heard that right.

A judge in Montana said it is your constitutional right to give your data to whoever you want to. You can read whatever propaganda you want, and you can even hate this nation if you want to. Now, I don't think that TikTok makes folks hate America any more than any other social media app. And honestly, the government should look at why Americans are so sick of the government and maybe not just try to shoot the messenger or the platform that gives Americans the space to air their grievances.

This is not over. In some ways, the TikTok ban we have now is a form of harm reduction because more intense surveillance bills like Section 703 that the Senate just passed to allow the government to spy on you without a warrant will stay away. I also feel that this is a little bit of a game of chicken.

The American user base makes up just 2% of the overall user base on TikTok. 2%? A little big for our britches, aren't we, USA? No business would make changes to their financial structure to accommodate the screaming of just 2% of its customers, even if they are the super cool Americans. What would be next? Would every country demand TikTok divest to their local billionaire buddies? It's truly madness.

So for me, I personally plan to keep creating content and I sleep well knowing that this Congress is one of the most dysfunctional in modern memory. May their ignorance, ridlock, and lack of seriousness be a blessing to my FYP and TikTok career and to yours as well.

We will continue to keep you updated on what's going on with the TikTok ban. Not so much because I care deeply about TikTok. I do care deeply about TikTok. But because of how they used an appropriations and spending bill to pass a deeply unpopular piece of legislation that violates the First Amendment rights of so many Americans.

What we're looking at here is how Congress is potentially misusing their levers of power to do something unpopular. And if they get away with it this time, what would they try to get away with in the future? As always, here at American Fever Dream, we never sleep and we will stay on top of it for you. Up next, we've got Sammy talking with the writer and director of the new film Hip Hop and the White House,

Jesse Washington. They're going to dig into how hip hop was a reaction to the Reagan administration and the ways that culture reacts to an unfair and oppressive government. You don't want to miss it. Stay tuned after the break for more with Sammy.

Today, we are thrilled to welcome Jesse Washington, director of Hip Hop and the White House, a new documentary that talks about the advent of hip hop and how it's been affected by U.S. policies and how U.S. policies have affected the music. Welcome, Jesse. Thank you so much for being here.

Great to be here. Thank you. Congrats on the documentary. It is so, so interesting and enlightening. And I've seen you do interviews about it and such an interesting topic to us. We love to talk about music on this show and how it's reflective and how it springs out of, you know, American cultures, subcultures, and how it's impacted by the way that American governance really chronicles

creates stratification in our society and creates these conditions. So can you talk a little bit about how you came to choose this as an area to explore? And I guess kind of like your background with hip hop and what made you interested in this particular story? Yeah, well, you know, your show and the topics that you deal with

make it a perfect home for this discussion because hip hop cannot be separated from the conditions that it grew out of, you know, starting in, in the 1970s and early eighties.

And so the main thing for me that connected me to this topic was just my life. And growing up in New York City and then in upstate New York in Dutchess County in the late 70s and early 80s, seeing hip hop take shape right before my eyes in terms of park jams and concerts and little dingy armories and my cousin b-boying in the park. And just seeing that and living that was...

The main thing that I brought to it, my colleagues had the brilliant idea. My colleagues at Anscape, the black storytelling platform, had the brilliant idea. Hey, man, election year coming up.

50th anniversary of the founding of hip hop coming up. Let's talk about hip hop in the White House. That's how it jumped off. It's really such an interesting conversation because I have to wonder, I mean, maybe this is getting like way ahead, but what was it like for you watching hip hop sort of leave its communities of origin and be taken into the mainstream? And from your perspective, what

Does it feel like to have that be adopted? Do you feel that, you know, it's appropriative? Like what are the marks of like, you know, a good adaptation into mainstream culture? I love that question because it's something I've really struggled with, especially recently. So I started DJing in 1986 and I was a fan of the culture, you know, probably starting in early high school. So like 1982 and hip hop was so disrespected and disregarded and

The mainstream literally said, it's not music. And here we are 50 years later, and it's proven to be this magnificent art form.

For a long time, I felt a little resentful, to be honest with you, because I was like, oh, everybody's acting like they always loved hip hop and it was cool. And I remember when you disrespected us and we couldn't get in. I mean, here's one example. It was in the late 90s and sneaker culture and hip hop go together. In my opinion, hip hop created sneaker culture. And so in the late 90s, there was some sort of formal event and I wore a suit and sneakers.

And I was laughed at and borderline kicked out. You know what I'm saying? And nowadays, that's just par for the course. You got CEOs doing that. So it took me a while, but then I really had to get over it and understand and accept that

This is what hip hop always wanted. The position we hold in the culture to be respected and embraced and loved and enjoyed by everyone from all backgrounds all over the world. That's what we wanted. You know, that's that's why we did it. Like hip hop at its essence is like, yo, listen to us. That's what it comes from. Like we're over here, man. This is our lives. Listen to us. Listen to what we have to say. Now people are listening. So I'm cool with it.

The second part of your question, what is exploitative or appropriative? Man, as long as you feel it and are authentic in your heart and respect the origins and the true nature of the culture, then we're cool. You know, so.

Take some time to learn about it. Don't presume that what you know of hip hop is all there is to know of hip hop. And that goes for everybody, not just people who might not be Black or Puerto Rican. Black and Puerto Rican people are the people who founded hip hop. It even goes for me. You know what I'm saying? I have to be very careful to respect the originators and to understand the history since I'm presenting a version of it. So

Everybody, man, as Bumby said in the documentary, man, y'all can come on in. What you're speaking to about people wearing a suit and sneakers, and now that's what Mark Zuckerberg's wearing. It really speaks to like, who is allowed to step outside the lines? Who is allowed to sort of like shirk any norms or bring something new into the picture without receiving that look like you've stepped out of what is considered acceptable? Yeah.

I've always felt like what you said about music, it's like when different genres come, there's always a crowd who's like, that's not music. With rock music, they're like, that's not music. With EDM, people are like, that's not music. I guess my question is like having watched that pattern, like at what point, what sort of moments or what sort of people kind of lead to that crossover when people are like, oh, this is actually not only is this music, but we need to garner the respect of this community?

Yeah, I think that the movement of the people and the response of the people is the sign of what is art and what is not. The masses are responding to it, then you got to respect it. And that's what happened with hip hop.

It was a super subculture among impoverished people in the Bronx and then Los Angeles and Philadelphia. And then all of a sudden when people heard it, they were like, wow, I have so many people tell me who are like my age and come from different backgrounds. Man, I was a suburban white kid. And when I heard NWA, I was blown away, you know? And so-

Look to the audience, man. If it's resonating and people are dancing to it and listening to it and studying every word like people did with hip hop, if people are memorizing songs upon songs, hey man, there's something here. To me, that's really the sign of when something has taken root and needs to be taken very seriously.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. I mean, that is how things bubble up into the culture. Let's talk about, you know, more of the like intricacies of hip hop. Let's talk about the sound, the things around it besides like, you know, what you hear when you hit play. I love it. Can you talk a little bit about the environments that hip hop was born out of and how those environments were created by public policy?

Yeah, absolutely. So the word that our OG interview subjects in hip hop in the White House kept using, KRS-One, Grandmaster Kaz, Roxanne Shante, Daddy-O, the word they kept using is oppression. So the environment that hip hop was created in was in the outer boroughs of New York City in the early 1970s going up until the early 80s.

And federal policies at that time, I'm sorry, I got to mention Davey D, who's a tremendous hip hop historian, professor, lecturer, DJ, the whole nine, who grew up in the Bronx. And so what they describe is federal policies, particularly Reaganomics, removing funding from these neighborhoods. But also, I don't want to let Gerald Ford off the hook. I don't want to let Richard Nixon off the hook for starting a war on drugs, which disproportionately targeted

minority areas while just as many drugs were being smoked in the suburbs, but they didn't put the cops there. So funding, resources were removed from poor black and brown communities, creating an environment of oppression. At the same time, police activity was flooding into these areas. Police enforcement was flooding into these areas due to the misguided and false notion

that poor people, black and brown people, use and sell drugs at a higher rate than everyone else. That's been proven to be not true. But this is the figment that they created in the imagination of America. So this is the environment that it came out of. And hip hop was created because, man, we need to create something out of nothing. Karras once said very eloquently, hip hop has always been about creating something out of nothing. Yes. And so-

But it was less than nothing. It was oppression. And the first rap record that really described that, the first hit rap record that described that in 1980, I believe the year was, was Melly Mel, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, produced and written by Duke Booty, The Message. And the first lines in the song are, broken glass everywhere, people pissing on the stairs, it seems they just don't care. I grew up in a project where people pissed on the stairs.

So I knew what he was talking about and we felt that that's really where hip hop comes from.

Yeah, there was a line that stuck out to me, turning garbage into gold. Yeah. I think it really sort of emotionally captures what early hip hop artists were doing. This was such an educational documentary in terms of the way that it tied the actual music and the songs that were coming out at particular times to the policies that were being implemented. So can you talk a little bit about how, like in particular, the 1980s and the Reagan administration was the center of this?

in the way that those policies really destroyed communities and what came out of that. And then I guess how that led hip hop artists to be motivated, to be politically active. Absolutely. So the first, you know, six or seven minutes of the doc is Reagan. And because, uh, as KRS said, Reagan is a part of hip hop's real and natural history. Uh, you know, he said rap grew out of the crack era and, and, you know, and Reagan, uh,

presided over that. And I'm going to speak very specifically here because it's important to be factually correct. And there's a lot of misinformation and disbelief around what I'm about to say. But Reagan's administration was supporting a war in Central America. And the CIA and other government officials knew that the Central American fighters were moving cocaine into the United States.

And they did not stop them because the proceeds of those drug sales were supporting a war that they deemed and considered to be in the best interest of America. So that inextricably ties Reagan to the start of the crack cocaine era in America, which started at the exact same time as hip hop. And as Roxanne Shante says in the documentary, they grew up together and are forever intertwined.

So you couple that with Reaganomics, which was a very specific economic, quote unquote, trickle down policy. Oh, we're going to give tax breaks to the wealthy, which will sort of trickle down to everybody else. It did not. In order to pay for the tax breaks for the wealthy, they had to remove funding for community centers, after school programs, and all kinds of other support that people deserve.

So that's really where it comes from. Now, I'll even push it forward a little bit because the main character in hip hop in the White House and our narrator and the central figure is a rapper named Jeezy. And he had an anthem called My President is Black, which many people know, which he released before Obama was elected. So he foretold the future. But also, Jeezy comes from these environments. He grew up

surrounded by poverty and oppression, he also grew up surrounded by drug dealing. And so as his history progressed in this environment, and as he became involved in what he calls street politics, you can really draw a direct line to Jeezy from policies of the Reagan era. It created this environment where the perception was the main opportunities for advancement financially in the hood was selling dope.

And then hip hop has gone on to have this long history of great artists that come from that environment, that rap about it. You know what I'm saying? And Jeezy talks about in the doc how Trap or Die was his first big anthem record that he put out. And he

He talked about hustling in that song. So, you know, it's a fascinating connection between political policies and particularly Ronald Reagan and the growth of development of hip hop. And that's what we tried to get into in the doc, hip hop in the White House. Was he the one who called Reagan the father of crack cocaine and hip hop? So let's talk about that line. Thank you for bringing it up. That was the one, the only, the inimitable KRS-One. And

What he said was, Reagan is the father of crack cocaine in this country as far as we're concerned. So I'm going to connect that to another statement, which plays a pivotal role in the doc, which is when Kanye said, after Katrina, George Bush doesn't care about Black people. So George Bush doesn't care about Black people. Reagan is the father of crack cocaine in this country. Neither of those statements are literally true.

And yet they are super duper facts. You know what I'm saying? Because the job of hip hop, what we've always done for the past 50 years is to collect an emotion, a feeling, a belief, an urgent imperative that oppressed people feel and boil it down to a song.

You know, NWA, F the police. You know, you know. Art is supposed to be about metaphors and conveying a feeling rather than like, oh, George Bush literally does not care about black people. That's not the point.

Exactly. It's not the point. The point is he didn't do right by these people. He failed in this moment. And so when KRS said that, first of all, as a director, you're sort of just like, yes, that's a bar. But then it's a profound statement.

It's a profound statement, and it really means a lot. I urge anybody who is interested in the topic of the history of the government and drugs in this country or doesn't believe what Kara said is true, please research a book by the late, great Gary Webb.

who it's called Dark Alliance. And this man put years of his life into investigating and documenting, improving the link between the government and the importation of drugs into the country, turning a blind eye to the importation. And so that's really what KRS was saying in that line. It's one of my favorite lines in the film.

For anyone listening, if you're really into like the history, if history of it is really exciting to you, even more than the music necessarily, this part was really, really fascinating, especially because now we're ultimately, I mean, we're looking at the Middle East right now. That war was a war that Reagan wanted to fight in the Middle East that has still, we're still experiencing the ripple effects of that today with Iran and everything that they're trying to do in the region. So it's really very much like

We're still experiencing this today. It's hardly something that has gone by the wayside. - No, 100%. I mean, these policies have repercussions that last indefinitely. And if we don't understand what happened, and if we can't really talk about it honestly,

then on a fact-based basis, then we're never going to come out the other side. And we really held ourselves to a very high journalistic standard in this documentary. And so we backed up everything. All these bold claims that hip hop makes, we backed them up. The thing is, it's not like you're trying to prove something beyond a reasonable doubt in court. Art is really just about expression. The way that people will critique or pick apart the specifics of what

hip hoppers or really any sort of like non means, you know, white musician is trying to say it's like people will pick apart.

the way in which those artists go about it when really it's like, are you getting the point or not? Are you hearing my feelings or not? I think for a while it was probably much easier to ignore. But then about halfway into the documentary, you talk about how rappers and hip hop artists actually started being active in politics. And I thought that that was one of the most interesting pieces because you have like these administrations who are trying to

not use, but bring in the hip hop community in a way that doesn't necessarily align with their policies. And, you know, you start to have hip hop artists in this community becoming not like a lobbying group, but a genuine interest group that administrations need to respond to. Yeah, 100%. And I will use the verb use because that's what two people in the doc, you know, who I greatly respect said brilliantly. Grandmaster Kaz said brilliantly.

all right, you use me, I use you. And hip hop is about that, man. Jay-Z gets a lot out of

hanging around with Obama. And then, you know, and onto the next one, he could, he could say, he could rap. Yeah, I got Obama on the text. You know what I'm saying? Like that's a flex. Totally. And then also the brilliant Bakari Kitwana said that with the Obama administration, which had a genuine love and respect for hip hop, but also man in politics, people be using people. And so he said, sometimes they're fighting for us. Sometimes they're using us.

So the documentary is really a call to action for hip hop and its constituents and people who love hip hop to understand what the game is.

and to play it effectively in order to get results. And so at the end, there was a young woman rapper in the documentary named Chica who was brilliant and plus a dope MC. And she said, we should get more return on our investment for lending our voice to these things. And so to go back to your original point,

Around in the late 90s and early 2000s, hip hop started to realize its power and to mobilize politically and then has moved in that direction ever since to greater or lesser extent. And we're at a point now where we need to really get organized and to partner up with people who understand how to hold politicians accountable, who understand how to extract power.

promises, resources, follow through in this process. And we need to use it because as Maxine Waters says, another great participant in the documentary, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, aka Auntie Maxine, she said hip hop could register more voters and have more influence than almost any other group out there.

So let's get to it, Hip Hop 2024, baby. Let's go. She was absolutely right. She was wonderful in the documentary. So that was the final question that the documentary left me with because it seems like it was a call to action to organize. But then what I noticed was that

the individuals in the documentary sort of all had different ends to which they wanted to organize. So it seems really hard to flatten it into like one thing that the hip hop community wants, obviously more resources, less oppression. So what would you say is kind of like, I mean, not that you're, you know, the spokesperson for everybody, but like, what are some of those major pillars of what you think the community should be organizing for?

Yeah, that's good. I'm going to have to think of that on the spot. And also hip hop is not monolithic. I mean, we got rappers in this doc supporting Trump. So what Waka Flocka Flame wants is probably different than what Bakari Kitwana or what Chica wants. Shout to Benjamin Franklin, by the way, that's an inside joke. I hope y'all watch it and get a good chuckle when the man who discovered electricity comes into the doc.

So, you know, I think the main thing is this. And Jeezy says that he always considers himself the voice of the people and his job is to bring information back to the people. And he means his people, which is poor people. You know what I'm saying? Like the black community in general and black youth in particular are disproportionately likely to live in poverty, to have less education, to have less opportunity. And so to me,

And this is where I come from, you know, and I've been fortunate to, you know, to make some steps forward in my life. But I still feel a responsibility to the people where I came from because I want to give them the opportunities that I have. So to me, that is our main constituency of hip hop, the poor, the oppressed, the dispossessed, people without resources. And so I think that what hip hop's ask should be is more help for them.

more opportunity, equal opportunity for them. And there's a lot of debate politically about whose fault it is that people are in poverty or if only you worked harder and all that. But I think all intelligent people in this country, regardless of political background, will understand that opportunity is not equally dispersed in this country and that poor people everywhere, due to the history of this country and how public policy coming from the presidential level on down to the local level has

our communities, the opportunity is not there for everybody. So I think hip hop should be focused on bringing more opportunity to people

communities that need it the most. The rich people are going to be fine. The connected people are going to be fine. A lot of hip hop falls into that category. But if you're out there riding around in a six-figure vehicle and making great money and people are listening to you, please think about your fans and your base and what made hip hop what it is today and use your voice in some way, shape, or form to help those who made hip hop what it is.

To your point about, you know, people debating, oh, is it hard work or is it opportunity? It's like, it kind of seems insane to me that people could make the argument that like the person who's working in Amazon is

in the warehouse and doesn't have a minute for a bathroom break could not possibly work be working as hard as someone who goes to work as like a lawyer at a top law firm like you're all working everyone's working but the results that you're getting and the autonomy that that work affords you is significantly different than in those situations when people boil things down to like hard work it just feels so subjective i think most people work really hard in their lives

100%. And poor people work hella hard. And a lot of people who are in these privileged positions don't understand how easy they had it and how their connections, their privilege, their family history, their money did the work for them. So they, oh man, I worked hard to get where I'm at. Yeah, you did, but you ain't worked no harder than somebody else. And so that is really troublesome. And also these hardworking people, positions, jobs keep this country going. So

I have a huge amount of respect and appreciation for the people who come through once a week and pick up our trash. That is a really important job. You know what I'm saying? The people who work at Amazon, I need that. You're making my life easier because my package gets here tomorrow. And it's hard for them to have a living wage, like to support yourself. Man, when I go to McDonald's at 11 o'clock at night and I see a woman my age at the window taking my order, and I know that's her second job.

You know what I'm saying? So she's putting in 16 hour days and goes home and sleeps for a few hours, gets her kids off to work and then goes to her first job and then checks in at McDonald's all to just barely hang on because she went to a high school that didn't have any AP courses. And the guidance counselor said, I, you're not going to college, just graduate and go into the military, get a job. Like,

That's the type of lack of opportunity that we're talking about. And people overlook that. The people in the C-suites and everything went to a great high school where you're expected and pushed towards this more affluent life. And if you come from certain environments, schools, backgrounds, families that don't have a history of that, then you're starting the race 50 yards behind and the race is only 100 yards. So that's who hip hop

does and should speak for, in my opinion. I just want to close out on a quote that I thought was really emblematic of the entire documentary. It was that America politicizes Black people and its public policy towards them, so you don't have to be a political hip-hop artist to make a political statement. I think that kind of boils down the purpose of the documentary, and that was, I think, just a very moving way to encapsulate it. I think that's a profound observation. And

Not to diminish the contributions of political hip hop artists, Chuck D, Public Enemy, Sister Soulja, Deb Prez, and on and on and on. But the three biggest songs, in my opinion, in this documentary in the history of hip hop in the White House are F the Police by N.W.A.

My President by Jeezy and FDT, F Donald Trump by YG. And none of these are political artists. These are people who have been politicized, who grew up in a politicized environment, whose lives were shaped by the policies of the president and his administration.

And so, you know, shout to Bakari Kitwana, the author, thinker, journalist who made that statement. You know, you don't have to be a political artist to make a political hip hop record. And it just goes to show how the policies of presidents have had an indelible effect on what we rap about.

And so the most powerful records are going to come from these people, these very powerful voices of hip hop that for the past 50 years have spoken truth to power. Here's the truth. Ayo, the power structure. Listen to what we have to say. You better respond to it.

or else you might get responded to. Awesome. Thank you so much, Jesse. Congrats on the documentary again. Honestly, if you're any sort of music fan, hip hop, non hip hop, check out this documentary. There's so much interesting history in it. And something that really struck me was that you can almost like transpose this theory of how policy affects music and art onto like any type of art. And, you know, we were just saying like, you know, people who are raised in an affluent community and expected to go to

onto an affluent future, like that's also political. That was also created by policies. So I think it's just a really great way to like reframe the way anyone thinks about any sort of result that comes out into the world, the work that people put out. And you see that it's not just something that was affected by something, you know, the year before, right before, but it can go back decades.

And really amazing art can come out of some pretty awful situations. So this was an incredible, incredible analysis of it. So thank you so much for joining us, Jesse.

Man, we appreciate you. This is a great show. Hip hop in the White House, baby. Hulu. Check it out. Check it out. We hope you enjoyed this episode on how policy affects culture with our little breakdown from V about the TikTok ban. We will, of course, keep you posted on that, followed by this interview with Jesse Washington. I highly recommend going to watch Hip Hop and the White House on Hulu. It's an awesome documentary. And until next week, this has been Sammy Sage on behalf of me and V. We'll be back next week with American Fever Dream.

American Fever Dream is hosted by Vitus Spear and Sammy Sage. The show is produced by Rebecca Sous-McCatt, Jorge Morales-Picot, and Rebecca Steinberg. Editing by Rebecca Sous-McCatt. Social media by Bridget Schwartz. And be sure to follow Betches News on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Betches.