While addressing “gun violence” at a North Minneapolis Conference on Peace, musician Stevie Wonder said it is contradictory to say, “Black Lives Matter” while black-on-black crime rages out of control.
According to Billboard magazine, Wonder said, “It is in your hands to do it. It is in your hands to stop all the killing and all the shooting wherever you might be. Because you cannot say, ‘Black lives matter,’ and then kill yourselves.”
He continued:
Because you know we’ve mattered long before it was said, but the way we show that we matter, the way that we show all the various people of color matter is by loving each other and doing something about it. Not just talking about it, not just waiting to see the media and press come when there’s a horrible thing.
He added, “The first thing you must do is stop believing the fallacy of you not being important. Because it is completely unacceptable for one to hate themselves so much that anyone that looks like you, you want to kill.”
Wonder’s Minneapolis speech represents a subtle but clear shift in his approach to “gun violence.” For example, on August 15, 2015, Breitbart News reported that Wonder was holding gun control concerts where he presented a top-down argument, i.e., he pushed people to support more government involvement via gun regulations.
Now, he is pushing a bottom-up approach, asking people in the community to police their own passions, their own behavior, and eliminate the plague of black-on-black crime in America’s inner cities.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
