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