Oklahoma-based Christian rapper Kadence spoke to Rapzilla about serving the community, making an impact on the next generation, and going out into different cultures and experiencing race through someone else’s eyes. The biggest takeaway from here is the word “do.” ‘What can we all DO to make a mark?’
“The key word is ‘do’. What can a person do?” said Kadence when asked what can the average person do to understand or help when bridging the gap between people taking sides in racial dialogue. “Typing on Facebook isn’t a ‘doing thing’. Most people aren’t going to read your essay, they are going to pick out the part they don’t like and argue back. We need fewer people arguing online and more people doing life with people that don’t look like them to gain an understanding from both sides.”
Kadence admitted that he has friends from many different cultures. The biggest exercise in understanding is just him “doing life” with them.
“When they’re telling me what goes through their mind and how they feel about this stuff because I love this person, I hear it and I’m able to empathize even as a black man. I can see how you feel that way,” he said. “But it goes both ways because they care about me, so when I’m upset, they are able to empathize. It’s hard to empathize with someone who’s alienated.”
Kadence said if you want to stop an escalating argument with someone online, message their inbox and have lunch with them. Sit down and see if you can reach equal footing.
He said one of the keys to understanding is having empathy. The reason why an American is not necessarily so devastated over a catastrophe or disaster overseas is because we may not have a connection to those people or situations. In the same way, a white person can’t connect with a black person and vice versa if neither of the parties ever engage each other in learning why someone might feel or think the way they do.
“We don’t know those people so it’s hard to really have empathy for people you don’t have relationships with.”
He continued “When you have people who have no relationships with people of any color but themselves jumping online saying, ‘I don’t get what the big deal is’ well there is a reason for that. You’ve only seen one thing your whole life. If the argument is, well there’s a black family in my church, ‘ok, do you invite them over for dinner. Do you do community with them, do your kids play together?’ ‘No, so you just wave on Sunday’s’. It’s not a relationship.”
Speaking of waving on Sunday’s, Kadence like most of his hip-hop brethren sees a lot of America’s racial tension stemming from the church. The Church isn’t necessarily causing the division, they just for the most part are not addressing the situation like many feel they should.
“Until the church unifies we’ll never see this happen in this age. The church is too segregated. As long as the church is segregated we’ll never really see racial injustice and inequality stop,” shared the emcee. “I’m just being honest. There’s a lot of huge churches and mega churches with 95% caucasian audiences and they still haven’t brought up race even though it’s everywhere. They don’t want to offend anybody, they don’t want them to feel uncomfortable. Churches are basically allowing it to exist in the church, so you have people say ‘I’m a Christian, but that dude deserved it.’ Since when does a Christian feel that everyone deserves to die?”
The rapper stated that if you are a person who supports “all lives” then you “should be broken up” every time ANYONE dies. He said you should equally feel outraged when a black person is killed by police as when an officer is killed by someone else.
“Focusing in on a certain life over all lives is just making sure that everyone is on equal ground,” he said. “If we can stand up for the bald eagles, the dolphins, the rare hummingbirds, no one gets offended, we want to save this one bird, no one gets mad. It just makes people uncomfortable.”
Bringing the conversation back to the church, Kadence said that it “needs to unify” on these issues.
“It shouldn’t be just black churches out there marching. It’s a bad look for the faith,” said the community leader. “A lot of people of color are jumping off Christianity because of that. They are like ‘wow, this is the white man’s religion’. When you don’t see white Christians standing up with you, you start to believe that.”
Kadence said the spiritual battle for the lives of the black community is in danger as well. He explained that other religions are trying to mobilize with pro-black, anti-Christian messages.
“They are starting to pull these young black people over and say, ‘Look, they don’t care about black people and look everybody is a Christian and they aren’t speaking up for you, but we’ll speak up for you’. They are leveraging what’s going on.”
Some of these religions are widely considered cults with two prominent ones, Egyptology and Black Israelites, along with older African based religions are becoming more popular. They, in a way, teach, “We’re God…people are being misled, the church isn’t stepping up.”
So when the church rejects their notion of help, and it feels if the majority of the population is against you, there really is nowhere to turn.
He said it’s discouraging how African Americans make up only 12% of the population and they can’t get even 100 white people to come stand with them for justice.
“I watch white Christian, 116 fans attack Lecrae for saying this [racial injustice] is wrong. That is crazy. ‘I like you as an artist as long as you don’t make me uncomfortable’,” said Kadence. “That’s not fair to an artist because an artist needs freedom to create and the freedom to speak freely and do those things. If they aren’t saying things that are anti-Christian, then what’s the problem.”
He continued, “People are saying Christian rappers are ‘race baiting’. When it’s abortion, nobody calls it ‘baby baiting’.
“When we say black lives matter, we aren’t saying everyone individually. We are talking about the justice system. Meaning, if someone gets shot before going to trial, we get to go through all the necessary things to make sure there was no other option,” he said. “When it’s on video and you see there’re no other options, and you think that could have gone differently…then it doesn’t go to trial and no one gets convicted. It goes on to the idea of, ‘Wow, we’re seeing this trend happen in the black community where they can be shot and no one cares’. They are not getting their constitutional right to go to trial because he had a bag of weed in his pocket. There are people in the capital building with bags of weed in their pocket.”
Like Lecrae revealed yesterday in his open letter, Kadence isn’t crazy about the Black Lives Matter hashtag and organization, but he “supports the general idea” although it’s often “misused.”
“If a cop is shot, justice is served 100% of the time. Even if you shoot the dog, there will be justice. That canine is more valuable to the justice system than a black life,” said Kadence. “Saying Blue Lives Matter is like saying the grass is green. We know Blue Lives Matter, that’s not debatable. That is actually happening. I don’t understand why someone would even need to say it.”
At the end of the day, Kadence is just asking for there to be fair and balanced justice.
“If you really support blue lives, then you should speak out about the ones who make blue lives look bad. If there’s a buddy of yours who’s using his position to bend the law, be careful standing next to him,” he stated.
What do you think of Kadence’s thoughts on race, police, and Black Lives Matter?
Read part one where he talks about empowering the community here.
