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Will someone please give rapper Lil Wayne a good Black history lesson? He’s back in the news for his upcoming Apartments.com Super Bowl commercial, which features Lil Wayne hanging out and cooking for America’s first president, George Washington, on a BBQ grill. This is spoof of the performance of Sherman Hensley and Isabelle Sanford as George and Weezy on the hit Black comedy “The Jeffersons.”
On the surface, it is innocent TV nostalgia but digging a little deeper one can see some serious Black imagery and history issues. Most obvious: a Black man cooking for a smiling slave master. Washington was never nice to his Black cooks and made great efforts to keep them enslaved. This Super Bowl ad is the equivalent of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings getting a good night’s sleep on their “Sleep Numbers Bed.”
Now, a controversy is brewing on social media about the Super Bowl commercial. Lil Wayne hasn’t issued an official comment but a source close to him reportedly states, “The ad is meant to be funny and silly and not the least bit offensive people need to calm down”.
