Kweli: "The Definition Of Proof Has Changed"

We like this talk with rapper Talib Kweli - not because we agree with anything he concludes - but because it shows how a black man today - a "smart" person, even a successful person - can be as wrong, confused, and ignorant as they come, even though he's wildly talented and can sound surface-level intelligent in conversation. To his credit, Kweli does repeatedly say he's not bright enough to answer some of the questions thrown at him (which is silly, because none of them are hard, just controversial) but then he concludes by giving credence to nonsense like Gary Webb's the-CIA-got-blacks-hooked-on-crack schtick and blows even that statement. (He's also never clear on the existence or not of the illuminati. Another tough call, right? NOT.) Basically, his mind, like most people's today, is really an arrogant mixture of the good, the bad, and the ugly, and, otherwise, of no real use to anyone but folks who really like to hear good rhymes that, in the end, no one's going to demand add up to much either.

But that lack of demand, that lack of standards, that lack of desire for an ultimate judgment one way or another - more than anything else - is finally why things are so across-the-board fucked up. And that won't stop until people really want to actually know something.