Megan Thee Stallion let Tupac speak for her to explain why Black folks are rioting across the country to protest George Floyd’s murder by police. As these demonstrations continue to spread across America and tensions begin to rise, many observers have criticized rioters for looting and destroying their communities rather than conducting peaceful marches and protests against racism. However, others have pointed out that Black folks have reached beyond their limit of this type of treatment, and that this is the only thing left to do.
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Megan Thee Stallion shared a famous clip of Tupac from an interview in 1994 in which he uses a metaphor to explain why Black folks are no longer asking to be treated equally after centuries of oppression. “If I know that, in this hotel room, they have food every day, and I knock on the door every day to eat,” Tupac explains in the clip, “and they open the door, let me see the party, just throwing food around, and they’re telling me there’s no food in here. Every day….”
“I’m standing outside tryna sing my way in: ‘We are hungry, please let us in,'” he continues. “After about a week, that song’s gonna change to ‘We hungry, we need some food.’ After two, three weeks, it’s like, ‘Give me the food or I’m breaking down the door.’ After years it’s like, I’m pickin’ the lock, comin’ through the door blastin’. It’s like, you hungry, you reached your level. We asked ten years ago. We was asking with the Panthers. We was asking with the Civil Rights Movement. Now those people that were asking, they’re all dead or in jail, so now what do you think we’re gonna do?” Megan then captioned the post, “We’ve been asking.”
Another view of protestors outside the police precinct - Scott Olson/Getty Images
