Older White Woman Shocked Tina Knowles, Grilling Her On Beyoncé Marrying ‘gangster rapper’ Jay-Z

Tina Knowles-Lawson, Beyonce and Solange’s mom is making the rounds promoting her new docuseries she is an executive producer on, the show is essentially about how black men are generally perceived by whites in general, and though it is not a new topic it still can be jolting when encountered — as she explained during an interview with Gayle King on Thursday’s CBS Mornings.

Lawson was promoting the new docuseries  Profiled: The Black Man. The series will tackle the various stereotypes Black men have had to face as hurdles to the recognition of their full humanity. She offered a the TV host a glaring example.

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I can remember getting on a plane, and an older white woman saying, ‘Oh, your son is a gangster rapper, right? How did you let him marry your daughter?’ ” Lawson recalled in a clip from Profiled.

“It was just shocking to me and I said, ‘No, actually, my son is a CEO,’ ” Lawson continued. “She didn’t think of him as a CEO, or even a talented celebrity that was a great businessman. At that time, I remember thinking, ‘I can’t be mad at her, because that is what the media portrays.’ “

That woman was, of course, referring to Jay-Z, aka Shawn Carter, who “officially” became a billionaire in 2019, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame two years later. Beyoncé married the businessman turned “business, man” in 2008 and together have had three kids, 10-year-old Blue Ivy, and 4-year-old twins Rumi and Sir.

“I sat there and I thought about how the media portrays Black men and how that is typical of the things that they would focus on, the negatives,” Lawson told King regarding that incident. “[They] try to portray us as these dangerous, our men as dangerous, uneducated. Gangster rapper, that’s all she could come up with, but that’s what she had been seeing on TV and all in the media. That’s how we’re portrayed, unfortunately.”