Tom Morello responds to accusation of having white privilege: “I’m not white”
The accusation came after Morello recently detailed his friendship with Ted Nugent.
Photo: Barry Brecheisen / WireImage
Tom Morello has responded to a Twitter user who accused him of betraying his white privilege when he revealed his friendship with controversial rocker Ted Nugent.
“Tom Morello’s white man privilege is showing,” the now-deleted tweet from user @therealnubian2 read, per The Independent.
“I’m not white,” Morello, who is of Irish and Kenyan descent, tweeted in response. The accusation came after the guitarist – who is known for his left-wing political views – discussed his unlikely friendship with Nugent, an outspoken conservative musician, during an appearance on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM show.
I’m not white. https://t.co/BG9nv0AChW
— Tom Morello (@tmorello) March 4, 2021
“For [Nugent’s] 60th birthday, someone reached out to me and said, ‘We’re making a video, and we’re asking guitar players [to share a few kind words],” he said on the show.
“I had to think, ‘What is the video that I’m going to make for Ted’s birthday?’ And I put some thought into it, and I said, ‘It’s gonna be about two things. One, it’s gonna be things that Tom Morello and Ted Nugent have in common,’ and I went down this long list: free-speech advocates, our love of rock ’n’ roll, our respect for Black artists who created rock ’n’ roll.”
“The second was things that Ted Nugent taught an adolescent Tom Morello about sex,” he continued. And then I went through the lyrics to the song Cat Scratch Fever [and] Wang Dang Sweet Poontang, which were utterly foreign to me, and I had to ask about on the playground.”
“Anyway, so Ted called me up after that. And while we certainly have differences, I consider him a friend.”
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