Hip-Hop Reacts to Police Killing Minnesota Man Philando Castile
After footage circulated online yesterday showing Baton Rogue police shooting and killing Alton Sterling, many asked when police brutality toward blacks would end, and that question, heartbreakingly, remains unanswered as a second black American has died as a result of police gunfire in as many days. Philando Castile was fatally shot by a Minnesota police officer during a traffic stop Wednesday evening (July 6) while he was reaching for identification. Castile was legally licensed to carry a firearm.
“He let the officer know that he had a firearm and he was reaching for his wallet and the officer just shot him in his arm,” a woman who identified herself as Castile's girlfriend said in a video posted to Facebook shortly after the shooting. The incident took place in Falcon Heights, a St. Paul suburb. with Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), whose district is about 2 miles from the scene, telling CNN, “There is a systematic targeting of African Americans and a systematic lack of accountability.”
As with Sterling death, the hip-hop community was vocal in their outrage over Castile's shooting, with August Alsina saying in the below video, "And this continues to happen every day. Shit at this rate it’ll be every hour. So I’m just asking the question that because all is lost and there is nothing lose, being that they’re taking our lives away from us, when do we stand up for ourselves? And show them what our lives mean to us?"
In the aftermath of the shooting, rappers like The Game, YG, Fabolous and more are up in arms. A gallery of reactions is included above, with additional details and quotes from the shooting available at The Washington Post. Below is the aforementioned video from the scene, which we do warn is graphic and disturbing.