(JTA) — The Voice, a British weekly aimed at the African-Caribbean community, pulled an interview with the rapper Wiley in which he repeated anti-Semitic tropes about Jews.
But in a statement Friday, the paper defended its decision to publish the interview.
“The Voice has not, and makes it clear again, supported or in any way condoned the outbursts by Wiley that the Jewish community finds offensive,” the statement said. “We do not support the stereotyping of any race or group.”
But the paper said that its role was to give voice to Black Britons and that should not be construed as an endorsement of every view it publishes.
“As a black media outlet, we are here to give our people a voice,” the statement said. “That doesn’t mean we will always agree with everything that is published.”
Wiley, who this week was banned from Twitter and Facebook over his views, said of British Jews: “They see us as slaves.”
Speaking about Jews, Wiley also wondered in the interview “why all of these families are rich, or all of these people have heritage, not just England, like, worldwide.” The interview followed Wiley’s apology for previous remarks about Jews.
In the article, the paper’s arts and entertainment editor, Joel Campbell, weighed Wiley’s claims that Black artists depend on Jewish lawyers to succeed.
“There is no way to put this all in one nutshell but the hypothesis that you need to get a Jewish lawyer in order to progress in the music business may be a complete fallacy (I haven’t done the numbers, looking into the correlation in respect of who is and isn’t successful with or without one), but yet it remains,” Campbell wrote.
“I’ve never seen anyone Jewish refute or confirm this,” he added, “but maybe, it’s a discussion that needs to be had?”
