Keke Wyatt: Black people aren’t the only people who’ve been oppressed

In the midst of a discussion on discrimination toward Black people, the ‘Nothing in this World’ singer resorts to whataboutisms

With the COVID-19 pandemic keeping many people inside, there have been plentiful online outlets to discuss the topic of race and Black oppression, especially with the Black Lives Matter movement reaching a higher profile last year.

When singer KeKe Wyatt appeared on one of these platforms, however, she expressed a different point of view when it comes to prejudice against Blacks, and wasn’t shy about it.

Pop culture site The Neighborhood Talk posted a clip to Instagram of the livestream show The Mahne Tea, which featured the R&B crooner engaged in discussion with four other Black gentlemen, including actor and former Love and Hip-Hop: Hollywood cast member Milan Christopher. During the Bigo livestream, Christopher was heard speaking about how Black Americans “have been segregated, persecuted, hunted down, killed, stolen from and humiliated.”

Singer KeKe Wyatt performs onstage during 2019 Black Music Honors at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre on September 05, 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images for Black Music Honors)

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It was at this point that Wyatt, 38, rolled her eyes in the camera and interrupted Christopher by saying, “and so have Mexicans and so have other people, honey. Black people are not the only ones that have gone through that.”

Christopher expressed that he wanted to finish his statement and later called out the singer for interrupting him and for seeming to speak sarcastically, but Wyatt continued, elevating her voice as she named other races that have suffered, including people of mixed race.

“You have to understand Black people are not the only people that have been oppressed! They are not the only ones, my n—a! Jewish people have been oppressed, okay. I can keep going. I’m biracial! We f—ing oppressed, ’cause Black people done made us feel like sh–! White people make us feel like sh–! You don’t know that life!”

Although she would say to Christopher “there is more to life than us being Black,” she warned that the heated discussion would bring her Black side out if it escalated further.

“I’m a very nice person, but when you bring the n—a out of me, honey it come out,” Wyatt said.

Wyatt has a white mother and her father is of African-American and Native American descent, as she once revealed during a 2009 Essence interview, choosing to claim all aspects of her ethnicity.

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“I am a woman. I ain’t like Tiger Woods,” Wyatt told Essence. “The truth is I’m 25% Black. I claim to be Black, Native American and White. I’m all of it. If you ask me, ‘What are you?’ I’m going to say, ‘I’m a woman.’ I stand up for all women.”

During her Essence interview, Wyatt also disclosed that she witnessed the prejudice her parents endured for having a mixed family, which explains her outburst with Christopher that biracial people are also oppressed.

“I used to tell [my mother] we’re not blind to the fact because we’re sitting there listening to people call her a ‘n—er lover’ or accusing my daddy of being a ‘sell out’ because he’s with a white chick,” the “Nothing in This World” singer told the outlet. “I told her she didn’t have to hide that stuff from us because we did see and hear about it, and kids did treat us differently.”

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