All week long, celebrities have been voicing their opinions about the horrible and violent murders of two Black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, who were shot dead by police while their deaths were filmed on camera. With these two tragedies charging America’s growing national conversation on police brutality and white supremacy, many hip-hop stars have had a lot to say about the issue. Now, hip-hop and Hollywood legend Queen Latifah has recently added her thoughts to the conversation and she is taking police and our justice system to task for their role in the continued violence sweeping the nation.
According to media reports, Latifah recently spoke about the shooting deaths of Sterling and Castile in a recent interview and she explained that, like all Black people, she’s felt the heaviness of their deaths all week.
“I’m almost at a loss for words,” Latifah said, explaining that she’s been carrying the weight of their deaths while working on the new Ice Age film. “This goes wherever I go. I’m Queen Latifah, but I’m Black wherever I go. I deal with the same experiences that other people deal with.”
Latifah, who comes from a family of police officers, then offered up her sorrow over the senseless killing of four police officers by sniper Micah Xavier Johnson in Dallas this week.
“I deal with the same experiences that other people deal with. I’m also the daughter of a cop, I’m also the sister of a cop, the cousin of a cop and the niece of cops. I don’t want the guns turned on police any more than I want the guns turned on us,” she said.
“I don’t want my father or my brother getting shot because some bad cops are doing this, consistently,” she added.
However, Latifah then gave an honest critique on police brutality and explained that bad police officers need to be held accountable for their crimes in order to show the Black community that their lives matter and that justice can be served for them as well.
“It’s time to make an example out of someone, as far as I’m concerned, who is a police officer,” Latifah said. “Because there’s no way all of these things could happen and there’s no guilty police officers [involved]. Every time these things happen, no one is really brought to justice at the end of the day. By the time it’s all said and done, the police officers usually walk. And what it does is leave us feeling empty, feeling hurt and feeling like we have no recompense and that it’s going to happen again.
“And what it also does is endanger the [lives] of police officers. You make all these good cops have to walk out here dealing with bad cops’ BS, dealing with the stuff bad cops are doing.”
What do you think of Latifah’s thoughts? Let us know in the comments.
