So Waka Flocka took to Instagram over the weekend to double down on comments in which he insisted that he is not black.
In his post, the rapper addressed comments that were made during an interview with Sway last week:
“I’m not the black America calls me,” Waka said in a video on Instagram. “I’m ‘black,’ but I’m not the black America says I am.”
The drama started when the rapper did an interview with Sway Calloway, in which he detailed his ancestry and claimed that he is not black or African American, since he has no African ancestry as all. Rather, his folks, he claims, are 100 percent Native American.
“I’m not African American at all,” Wacka said. “My folks is not from Africa. A lot of people in this room’s folks ain’t from Africa. Might be a couple, but people just don’t understand. I asked my grandma, ‘Yo, Grandma, what’s your background?’ She said, ‘Red-foot and black-tail Indian.’ I said, ‘What?’ She said, ‘Yeah. My mother and my father, we 100 percent Indians.’ I asked my other grandmother, and we got Cherokee in us, and European and Italian. A little Dominican.”
Cue the entire internet:
“Red-foot and black-tail Indian”? Really?
And then the media—mainstream and social alike—ran with it and out the gate. Cue the Twittersphere having its fun.
Of course, the rapper did attempt to explain himself better: “When it comes to talking about African Americans, I have no education with that. Period ... I’m not even connected with that no more, because that is a system. That is, like, connected to, ‘Hey, he’s a bad guy. Don’t hang with him.’ Let me find out for myself. I’m not African American at all. My folks is not from Africa.
“I’m uneducated … I’m confused, “ he continued. “But I’m damn sure not black. You’ll never call me black.”
It would seem that Waka has a bit of trouble unpacking race from ethnicity and cultural background. He himself stated that he was confused; and as he attempted to explain himself while stuck in a deep rabbit hole, searching for the actual definition of the word “black,” he managed to shove his entire leg down his throat.
One would hope that Waka actually knows that he’s black (check him out in this lovely “Black by Popular Demand” shirt, which he wore to the interview):
But hey, we’re all on our own journey to self-discovery, I guess.