When Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., chastised Jay-Z and Beyonce in a TV interview for their recent trip to Cuba, he especially criticized Jay-Z for his adoration of Che Guevara.
“I think Jay-Z needs to get informed,” Rubio said. “One of his heroes is Che Guevara. Che Guevara was a racist. Che Guevara was a racist that wrote extensively about the superiority of white Europeans over people of African descent, so he should inform himself [about] the guy that he’s propping up.”
Jay-Z, Carlos Santana, and Johnny Depp — who have all been spotted in Guevara t-shirts in the last decade — have, as Rubio correctly noted, largely ignored the issue. Yet, some leftist defenders of Guevara do occasionally deal with this troubling issue. A blogger named Faraji Toure at “Afro-Punk” a notes a troubling passage from Guevara’s 1952 diary:
“The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese.”
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