Definitely no stranger to putting his foot in his mouth, it looks like once respectable journalist Geraldo Rivera has done it again.
In a recent interview with HuffPo Live, the Fox News regular said that he thinks hip-hop culture has done more harm to people of color than racism ever has:
“… and I love Russell Simmons. He’s a dear friend of mine. I admire his business acumen. At some point, those guys have to cop to the fact that by encouraging this distinctive culture that is removed from the mainstream, they have encouraged people to be so different from the mainstream that they can’t participate other than, you know, the racks in the garment center and those entry-level jobs, and I lament it. I really do. I think that it has been very destructive culturally,” Rivera said.
Never one to take attacks lightly on the culture he helped cultivate and bring to the mainstream, Simmons responded to Rivera’s claims in a recent interview with TMZ:
“Geraldo, the prison industrial complex got people so twisted. For 40 years, they’ve been locking up diseased drug addicts, educating them on criminal behavior and dumping them back in the ‘hood. The poetry and the reflection [in hip-hop] are what come from that jail culture; that’s obvious. …The media is really dumb to let that man [speak]. He needs to be progressive and do good work to help people. And now he’s a talking head. He lost on ‘[Celebrity] Apprentice,’ man, I can’t respect that. After losing he needs to just talk. He needs to get himself relevant.” Simmons said.
