In prison, I witnessed the gap in accountability between the poor and the elite. A banker’s message to Epstein is racist and reductive
Here is an email that should bring shame to Jes Staley:
you want to know why we are not São Paolo, watch the TV adds on the Superbowl. Its all about hip blacks in hip cars with white women.
The group that should be in the streets, has been bought off. By Jay Z
Written more than a decade ago to Jeffrey Epstein, it is sloppy, ungrammatical, and intellectually thin. Staley, who would go on to become CEO of Barclays before being banned for life from top roles in the financial industry in connection with his Epstein ties, reflects on why poor Americans don’t take to the streets to protest injustice, unlike those in São Paulo, Brazil, where tensions over the World Cup had sparked uprisings. His explanation: look at the Super Bowl ads. Look at the spectacle. People are pacified and lulled into compliance. He then invokes Jay-Z, a man whose music millions of us were raised on, to suggest that the artist has been “bought off”. The people who should be in the streets, he claims, have been neutralized by the records they love.
