Whoopi hates Donald Trump, probably because he doesn’t praise her to the heavens. Quite a few people think Whoopi is all about race and that she finds something to gripe about when many others don’t see it that way at all. The thing is race will always be with us. Why? Because there are major differences between the major groups of people and that matters because of the differences. The differences are seldom mentioned but race is frequently used as a cudgel against white people.

Nice going to Jon Batiste for trying to get us past BLM, Race and our differences but it’s just a nice try.

He released “We Are”, described by Vanity Fair as “a vivid turn from straight jazz to joyful, danceable pop and neo-soul”.

“The album is something that I have not heard done in popular music, which is defying the construct of genre, which I think has pigeonholed a lot of artists,” Batiste told Reuters in a Zoom interview from his New Jersey home.

“There’s no genre of person. And therefore, there are no genres of music.”

Known for his work as the musical director of U.S. chat show “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”, Batiste is in the running for a best original score Oscar for animation “Soul”, for which he already won a Golden Globe.

Sitting at his piano, the 34-year-old said he hopes his album will show humans are all connected regardless of their skin color or gender.

“When we try to fit music into these small cubby-holes we limit the humanity that can be expressed through the music, and it’s the same thing that happens when we try to limit people into these genres of … black, white, woman, all these things,” he said.

“So this music is almost a total allegory to show … we’re connected in ways that are much bigger than the things that we give so much credence to on the surface.”

     “We Are” took shape over six days in September 2019, during which Batiste said he had “around the clock sessions” with musicians in his “Late Show” dressing room and got the “blueprint” done. He completed the record last summer.

In June, he gathered musicians in New York’s Union Square to protest racial injustice in the United States following the May 25 death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a Minnesota police officer knelt on his neck….. He failed to mention riots, looting, murder and BLM.

“I do think that what’s happening in our time is a crisis of identity, which then leads to … the problem of apathy,” Batiste said.

 “And being able to speak to that in this time … is more important than ever simply because we’ve been disconnected from it in a way that has led us to identify with things that are not actually who we are.”

Well, … Yes,… but it’s race differences and the lack of recognition of those differences, not being apathetic to them that causes some of the disconnects. One doesn’t solve problems by ignoring or re-naming them. There are differences among people. Those differences don’t disappear by ignoring them or by being wrong about them. It seems impossible that the black race can get along with other races. BLM is one manifestation of the impossibility or the desire to make America into something impossible. All men are not equal at all. Not even remotely. Making the case that people are equal takes a lot more than just writing it in a declaration. George Floyd may have been murdered. OTOH he may have simply died as a result of several factors and actions that under different circumstances would not have happened. Human experiences aren’t sufficient to justify treating people as the same. Because of that George Floyd may have died. Certainly it would be better if George had not died. It would be better if people were not sufficiently different if that would have saved George Floyd from dying on that day in that way. But… That’s different than reality and reality is all that there is. Ignore it at your peril.

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