Vic Mensa Calls Out Justin Timberlake for “Benefiting From Using Black Culture”

Last night, Vic Mensa appeared on “The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore.” He was part of a roundtable discussion about the controversy stemming from Justin Timberlake’s tweets in response to Jesse Williams’ powerful speech on racism at the BET Awards last weekend. Timberlake initially tweeted out support for Williams, but then got heavily criticized when he responded “we are the same” to a journalist who asked him to reflect on his own cultural appropriation (a major topic in Williams’ speech); Timberlake later apologized.

Mensa opened up the discussion by touching on the issues he had with Timberlake’s comments. In particular, he called out the singer’s history of inaction:

Our problem here is that Justin Timberlake himself–you know–is definitely benefiting from using black culture for his sound, his dance moves, his dancers, and blowing up off of it. But if you roll down Justin Timberlake’s Twitter for the past two years, which I just did, you see nothing that supports black people when it’s more difficult, when there’s a struggle. With everything that’s going on, and everybody that’s been killed by police on camera in the last couple of years, there’s no #BlackLivesMatter; there’s no “praying for Baltimore;” there’s no “praying for Flint,” you know, because that’s a dangerous subject for him to touch. And we’re not feeling him being down when it’s beneficial to him, and turning a blind eye when it could be dangerous.

Mensa closed off the discussion saying, “Sit down until you show us you care. Don’t tell us shit unless you show us you care.” In a tweet earlier today, Mensa clarified that he was not trying to “bash” the singer; he “was just shedding some light on the idea of cultural appropriation.” Watch the “Nightly Show” panel and see Mensa’s tweet below.

The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore
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