Musician, comedian and stand-up comedian Nick Cannon is on a journey to educate himself on black-Jewish issues after a July podcast during which he said blacks are the “true Hebrews” reported by ABC News on Wednesday -market.
In the podcast, Cannon repeated the ideas of the Melanin theory, which states that people with dark skin have advantages over non-blacks and that their respective contributions to world culture and history have been eliminated. Cannon said non-blacks are “barbarians”, an idea he picked up in the ABC interview.
Cannon received a tremendous reaction for his comments on Cannon class podcast and its working relations with CBS were interrupted. Fox accepted his apology and resumed his role as host of The Masked Singer. He donated his first salary from that program to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
His original comments seemed to have touched on some very important issues in the relationship between Jews and blacks in the United States. Some black activists claim that modern Jews, who they generally regard as white, are not “really” Jews and that, being a Semitic people in the Middle East, “real” Jews were black and modern blacks are – in fact, the real ones Hebrews. This would mean that modern Jews are claiming a faith and culture that are not really theirs.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center spoke to Cannon on his podcast and shared with him the pain of having “someone on his show saying that I am not even a real Jew” [because he is not black]. The other person was rapper Professor Griff who is a member of the Nation of Islam and supports Afrocentrism, which is the view that Africa is the source of human civilization.
“I didn’t know about you before the show,” Rabbi Copper said, “but the world does.” That is why he and other Jewish leaders involved Cannon in a series of conversations to expand their understanding of Jewish culture and history.
“I’m not looking for forgiveness,” Cannon told ABC, “I’m looking for growth.”
The comments below the video were less enthusiastic, with many saying that he was allegedly forced to tell “the truth” and that “he just misses the money” and so he changed his mind.
