KISS’s Gene Simmons recently gave his two-cents on racism in America, saying it “has got to stop.”
“Yes, [America is] racist,” Simmons tells Metal Hammer in a new interview. “Yes, it’s anti-Semitic. And yet, here in America, there are no limits. You can have an African American president, you can also have the alternate — a semi-racist, semi-extremist president — but anything’s possible. Which is why I still worship the idea of America: it can get better and it will get better.
“People think of Martin Luther King, making great advancements for African Americans and just kind of smashing the door open to deal with it,” he continued. “And you’ve got to deal with this thing. We’ve got to get along and stop treating African Americans, especially, so horribly in America. Racism has got to stop.”
Last year, Simmons joined over 170 black and Jewish leaders from the entertainment industry launching the Black-Jewish Entertainment Alliance (BJEA), described by the organization as ‘a joint initiative by black and Jewish entertainment industry professionals devoted to countering racism and anti-Semitism in the entertainment community.’