University of Oregon

Run the Jewels

Commentary on the personification of race and white supremacy in A.G. Rojas’s video is by Chad Kautzer, philosophy professor and author of Radical Philosophy: An Introduction (Routledge/Paradigm, 2015). The song is “Close Your Eyes (And Count to F**k)” by Run the Jewels and featuring Zach de la Rocha. The video is directed by A.G. Rojas and was released on March 26, 2015. The commentary on this video is not an attempt to interpret Rojas’ intentions or Run the Jewels’ lyrics.

Video for Run the Jewels, “Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkGwI7nGehA
Chad Kautzer: https://ucdenver.academia.edu/ChadKautzer
The Angela Davis quote is from an interview published in The Guardian on December 14, 2014 (http://www.theguardian.com/global/2014/dec/14/angela-davis-there-is-an-unbroken-line-of-police-violence-in-the-us-that-takes-us-all-the-way-back-to-the-days-of-slavery).
The Du Bois quote is taken from W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Oxford University Press, 2007 [1903]), 3.

"Gender, race, class, and other social structures exhibit a dialectical logic, because they are relations of power and, more specifically, structured hierarchies of domination. The positions in this dialectic are internally related and interdependent insofar as they result from the same conditions and relations of domination. Consequently, they can exist neither apart nor as equals and in this way structural groups differ from cultural groups." --Chad Kautzer, Radical Philosophy: An Introduction, 18.