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PERSON: Those dance moves in the beginning, though, that chicken shit he was doing?
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That's me when I'm off the Hennessy.
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JACQUES: On Saturday, May 5th Donald Glover, also known as Childish Gambino
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debuted the new music video for his song “This Is America.”
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It's stirring major conversation online, so we wanted to see what Americans thought.
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Or at least the ones we were able to find in New York.
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JACQUES: Do you have any thoughts on Donald Glover? Childish Gambino?
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PERSON: He's a genius like straight up my man is a genius.
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PERSON: I think Donald Glover is probably the most well-rounded artist of our time.
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PERSON: I don't even know who he is, honestly.
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This is the guy right here?
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JACQUES: So tell me what stands out most to you when you're watching the video,
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especially at the beginning?
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PERSON: The bag on the person's head could be the blind culture of today, you know,
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with the gunshot the police brutality of young black males.
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PERSON: Clearly this is like for a white audience it's not like for black - like we see this all
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the time and then it kind of sucks that he's just like so easily
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is like killing black people, in his film.
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PERSON: You can say this is America and show something as awful as that, and me being someone
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who's proud to be American can't even really disagree with it.
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PERSON: That stance that awkward demeanor that he had was a very popular like Jim Crow image.
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PERSON: We use dance as a way for an escape from all of this negativity and the
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crime and violence that's happening behind us which is portrayed there.
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PERSON: I think it hit pretty well on the shucking and jiving and like, you know,
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the whole idea of black culture being entertainment.
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PERSON: You're following the trends of these rappers but you're not noticing the
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pit of fire that you're in is going on around you.
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PERSON: He distracted us a lot with a lot of pop culture references, like using a lot
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of popular dances that distracted us from the greater picture that was going on in the background.
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And then a lot of times if you have the conversation online there were so many people that were like,
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"Watch the video more than one time."
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PERSON: I'm so pretty like I'm dancing we're all like at the same time
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so into ourselves and Instagram and just as much about taking pictures of ourselves
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at protests as we are about going to protests.
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PERSON: I personally think it was a shot at the whole Dylan Roof thing.
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PERSON: I would say there's probably something to do, I don't know this to be a guess like
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with the mass shootings like you never like someone can appear so normal and happy or
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like he's dancing then all of a sudden it's like people are dead.
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PERSON: So I think the AR to the choir was pretty cool.
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PERSON: In general it's just like brutality it's kinda like craziness.
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PERSON: There's like maybe some kind of like big deal but then everyone kind of just goes
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back to like you know their lives and nothing really actually changes.
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PERSON: I don't know if it's what I really needed as a black guy in America to see or
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to have visualized for me especially since Donald Glover himself is a black person and was
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part of it is him perpetuating violence against other black people and I get the point but I think
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you have to make your visuals accessible to a really wide range of people.
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PERSON: You know, if you're not making art that's challenging you know people's thoughts
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that's challenging you know what society is saying you know what society thinks and
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pushing forward the conversation about whatever it is you're trying to talk about then
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you know, what's the point?