In case you’ve missed it, actor Lakeith Stanfield is embroiled in a family feud with black media.
While The Root has yet to catch a stray, the Sorry to Bother You star had some things to get off of his chest in regard to media outlets and platforms he believes are pushing an “anti-black” agenda.
“It’s a fact that a lot of these platforms are usually or tend to be feeding grounds for negative reinforcement toward BLACK ‘nonconformists,’” he posted on Instagram. “They bolster faux vanity and hold a white supremacists scope over black men and women often highlighting negative attributes and downplaying mind-expanding ones. They serve as bottomless coward consumption pits and digital, audio, or otherwise slave mentality [sic] museums.”
Stanfield specifically called out The Shade Room, Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club, popular gossip forum Lipstick Alley, and hip-hop aggregator WorldStarHipHop as primary offenders.
But never one to miss an opportunity to return fire, Charlamagne Tha God hit the airwaves on Thursday, naming the 28-year-old actor The Breakfast Club’s “Donkey of the Day.”
“You can say any and everything about me. I’ve damn near heard it all about myself online. But what you won’t do is ever fix your lips to call one of my platforms, especially The Breakfast Club, anti-Black,” Charlamagne said. “I strive every day to be the perfect balance of ratchetness and righteousness. There isn’t another show out there that goes from Byron Allen to Blac Youngsta like it’s nothing. You tell me a show where the guest list goes from the Honorable Louis Farrakhan to 21 Savage.”
He added, “We’ve made plenty of mistakes on this radio [show], plenty of things I’ve looked back on and said, ‘Yeah, we should have played that a certain way,’ and all that critique is fine. But Lakeith Stanfield, don’t you ever fix your raggedy-ass mouth to call the author of Black Privilege […] anti-Black.”
As the universe looked on and munched its popcorn from the sidelines, Stanfield caught wind of Charlamagne’s retort and returned to Instagram to deliver his own 13-minute response.
After explaining that his retort would be free of “ad hominem attacks,” the sometimes-rapper got right to it.
“You just illustrated that sometimes you bring good guests, sometimes you bring bad guests,” he said. “And that’s kind of what I hinted to in the subtext of what you just read. Basically what I was saying was outlets like yours have a tendency to lean towards highlighting negative things. And that’s true. And if you don’t understand that we’re engaged in war—that it’s a war to be black in this bitch—that means if you ain’t on the team moving things forward, then you’re against the goddamn team. Period.”
While Charlamagne has yet to respond to Stanfield’s latest salvo, I’d like to take the time to thank Lakeith for sparing my co-workers and me from his wrath; we look forward to including his name at least 57 times in next year’s Root 100.