Ki’Shon Furlow on the importance of education about race

Ki’Shon Furlow grieved the killings of Alton Sterling and Philandro Castile last month, but if his next project doesn’t address police brutality, it’s not because he’s apathetic about it.

“I need to learn more from people who’ve experienced more before I speak into the situation,” Ki’Shon told Rapzilla at Legacy Conference 2016. “We have so many black leaders like [Propaganda] and other people who are really good voices for this movement, people who are educated…

“Some of my [music] will always reflect the pain of being a black man in America and that kind of stuff. Before I could say I’m the frontline front piece, I still think I’m so young and I got to learn some more before I can fully tap into that, but I one-hundred percent believe in fusing the sociopolitical activism into the music. I think it’s what we need more of, especially in this time and this era.”

It takes humility to say, “I need to learn more,” before tackling an issue.

And when tackling an issue involving a different race or culture, Ki’Shon said it takes humility to admit the need for genuine relationships to understand different experiences.

“It’s all an education thing,” he said. “We’re all secluded from each other. We live in these various spaces, and we never have the opportunity to sit down and have conversations with real people.”

Not everyone who bought Ki’Shon’s latest project, Voices, probably remembers the first time they felt black. He does.

Around age seven, Ki’Shon asked a neighborhood kid if he could ride his bike.

“No,” the kid said, “my dad said I can’t let niggas ride my bike.”

Ki’Shon remembers when no one at his majority white university tried to work in groups with him until they realized his grades were some of the best in the class. One reason he remains in higher education today is to break stereotypes.

“I really do want to thrive in that world of academia, whether it be as a professor or a provost or a dean,” he said, “just to undermine presuppositions people have… I’m really a rapper. I’m really from the hood. I really talk this way. I really dress this way. I really am this way.

“But I’m still an intellectual. I’m still a great person. I’m still involved in my neighborhood, still highly involved in my church and leadership and all of these roles, and so just because I’m foreign and because I’m different, it doesn’t mean that I’m not at all relatable…

“Humans have more in common than we can know. It’s just getting over the hump of the things that make us alienated and the things that make us different, that’s part of why I want to live in those spheres.”

David Daniels
David Daniels
David Daniels is a columnist at Rapzilla.com and the managing editor of LegacyDisciple.org. He has been published at Desiring God, The Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, CCM Magazine, Bleacher Report, The Washington Times and HipHopDX.
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