Jay Z takes money from Slave Traders
by on January 30th, 2007
The Jiggaman was all smiles recently when the team announced that its new arena in Brooklyn, Jay-Z’s hometown, would be called the Barclays Center, after UK-based Barclays Bank, which is paying $400 million over 20 years for naming rights. But just after the January 18 announcement, local politicians and journalists quickly rang the alarm on the deal, criticizing the team and its majority owner, Bruce Ratner, for taking money from a bank whose founding family profited from its ownership of slaves in the 18th century and was involved in controversial dealings with the South African government in the 1980s.
Since then, Jay-Z (real name: Shawn Carter), who owns less than one percent of the team, has declined to comment. His his rep told TMZ that there would be no statement given or action taken by Carter. The rapper has a history of boycotting: Last year, he stopped drinking and serving Cristal champagne after an executive with Cristal’s producer made disparaging remarks about rappers and their affinity for the bubbly.
Barclays, for its part, says its slave-trade past should be understood in the context of history, and says that it will spend $2.5 million on enhancing basketball courts all over the borough of Brooklyn.



























You, me, Jay, and EVERYBODY else have been dealing with people who built their wealth ofF the slave trade…
gimme a break.
developing nations. You might have had a first-hand experience with a prison
laborer if you have ever booked a flight on Trans World Airlines, since many
of the workers making the phone reservations are prisoners. Other companies
that use prison labor are Chevron, IBM, Motorola, Compaq, Texas Instruments,
Honeywell, Microsoft, Victoria’s Secret and Boeing. Federal prisons operate
under the trade name Unicor and use their prisoners to make everything from
lawn furniture to congressional desks. Their Web site proudly displays
“where the government shops first.”
I didn’t read on this site how the DC residents don’t have voting rights in a place Slaves built.Ironically, the White House, official residence of the President of the United States, was built with slave labor. Considering the fact that the location of the capital city of the United States, Washington, D.C., was originally a swamp, necessitating the drainage of the area before the city was built, it is likely that the city itself was largely initially built by the labor of slaves. It is also noteworthy that the White House was staffed by slaves owned by the successive presidents, for about the first forty or more years of its existence. Until all these facts are brought to light, we cannot expect America to arrive at a state of social peace. As long as the past is covered up with lies, so that Americans are not allowed to recognize the course of action that must be taken to create a balance between the ethnic groups in America, so that genuine social justice can be obtained, not only will social peace be impossible, but the likelihood that the future will be one of further dissolution is almost guaranteed.) All I’m saying is why hold Jay to a standard we aren’t willing to hold ourselves and STOP USING PRODUCTS FROM COMPANY’S THAT USE SLAVE LABOR ACROSS THE BOARD.
Please stop spamming other news. It’s ok to do it on one story but not throughout the site. I’ve already deleted 3 of your posts saying the same thing under different stories. Failure to stop will result in your account being deleted.
put shit on here for us to read & make comments about 4real dough.
How many people in here wear Timberland boots? For corporatepimp Dam didnt make Jay(If he was lame he wont be here today) he just helped him on his way & got paid.