Earlier this week, Jared Kushner stopped by Fox & Friends to discuss issues he’s noticed Black Americans “complaining about,†which he suggests the Trump White House can only help if Black people want it hard enough. “President Trump’s policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they’re complaining about,†he declares. “But he can’t want them to be successful more than that they want to be successful.†Many Black people pointed out that the solution to systemic racism, inequality, and the COVID-19 pandemic has not, as of yet, been a watered-down version of The Secret, but Spike Lee summed it up a little more succinctly: “For this guy to say that Black people, that we don’t want to succeed? Hey, let him come to Brooklyn talking that.â€
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Academy Award–winning director discussed Kushner’s comments on Friday’s episode of SiriusXM’s The Joe Madison Show. “I am so tired of white folks telling us what we need to do,†said Lee. “How could this guy, how could this punk ass, say what Black folks need to do? It’s like there wasn’t 400 years of slavery, systematic racism. We want everything that all Americans want, but this thing has been set up so we can’t get there. And that’s what this election is about. So, for this guy to say that Black people, that we don’t want to succeed? Hey, let him come to Brooklyn talking that. Let him come to Harlem talking that mess.â€
Former President Obama was among the Black Americans who found Kushner’s comments wildly ahistorical. “He wants to take credit for it, says he’s the best president for Black folks since Abe Lincoln. Now his advisers are out there saying, including his son-in-law, his son-in-law says, ‘Black folks have to want to be successful. That’s the problem,’†Obama said of Trump at Tuesday’s drive-in Biden rally in Orlando. “Who are these folks? What history books do they read?â€
Continued Spike Lee in his Friday interview, “They’re trying to keep, you know, take our eyes off the prize. First of all, that guy’s a punk. Second of all, our ancestors with — here’s how America was built, the United States of America was built by the stealing of the land from the Native Americans, and the genocide Americans coupled with slavery. So, we built this country! So, what the hell is he talking about? We don’t want to succeed?! He’s nuts!â€