, RZA addressed criminal justice reform and touched on a concern many people have about how a Donald Trump presidency will negatively affect the prison system.
Already, Business Insider reported on Wednesday that prison stocks rose after Trump was declared President-Elect. The prison industry, the site notes, would likely have been more fearful under a Hillary Clinton presidency. RZA says in his interview, “While Mr. Trump is a fellow New Yorker and a great businessman and really has done great for his family, I don’t see that politically and on a world stage being great for our country.”
As far as criminal justice, Trump has been preaching about the need for “law and order,” though some point out that he won’t have say in mass incarceration policies at the local and state levels. RZA told Sway and his co-hosts, “Criminal justice, that needs more correction than any part of our system. You see what they’re doing as far as arresting us, beating us on the head, killing innocent citizens, unarmed citizens.”
RZA also explained that he always gets detained while going through customs because of a marijuana charge he picked up as teen in 1988. “If that’s the law that’s the law, but when you look at nine states right now, where young white men are becoming millionaires from selling weed, from an industry that we built,” says RZA.
“Even though it was a criminal industry, it was an industry we built. And now these young men and corporations are about to make millions and millions of dollars on it and nobody’s going to go to jail for it. And yet, we got kids that’s sitting in jail from the same entrepreneurship.” RZA also notes that back in the ’80s, he made his money selling weed to brokers on Wall Street.
