Vic Mensa questioned why solidarity should require silence about anti-Black racism during his conversation with Abdul El-Sayed.
The rapper recalled children using a racial slur toward him in Palestine while reaffirming his support for Palestinian liberation. Vic Mensa’s connection to the issue goes back years. In a January 2018 essay, he described traveling to Palestine the previous summer with Black artists, scholars and activists through Dream Defenders. Mensa made clear that his essay was not an attack on Jewish people. He framed it as criticism of the Israeli state’s treatment of Palestinian civilians, drawing on what he said he had witnessed rather than claiming to explain every part of the conflict.
Mensa discussed that same trip in a separate Everything Is Political interview, telling Celine Semaan that being in Palestine had shaped his perspective. He said he drew on lived experience as well as reading, then used raps and essays to express his thoughts and observations. Asked specifically about the 2017 trip, he recalled watching a young Palestinian’s encounter with Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem while he was with Marc Lamont Hill. Mensa also called anti-Blackness a global problem, even as he credited his own religious practice with helping him treat people better.