Sorry for the long post
Referring to the soccer player, right? He's supposed to be friends with them sure, but that doesn't hold any weight. A racist is going to be a racist regardless of the situations they're put in. He might go out socially with the team, but if he truly doesn't like black people or being around them or thinks negatively about them, it's likely going to show eventually, especially after being around them on a constant basis.
True you can't know someone's feelings with 100% certainty, but the song I posted above paints a pretty clear picture about Em's feelings towards Proof. Em has shown Proof nothing but love from what I've seen. To me it seems pretty obvious that Eminem cared tons about Proof, I don't know how you can write that off. I mean Em stopped rapping and got heavily into drugs and nearly overdosed, and Proof's death played a large part in all of that. That's how close he was with him and how much it hurt him to have him gone. He didn't even feel like going on with life anymore.
In regards to not "holding Proof down in several ways," what are you referring to? His family after his death? Because if so I already gave a rebuttal to that.
Money doesn't solve all problems and suddenly make everything all good. There have been plenty of cases where money was involved and shyt wasn't able to work out because of people's differences. So to say that money would have been enough to hold everyone together seems ignorant to me.
Can you support this claim of Em/Proof having a falling out? I think you might be getting him confused with Royce. Only thing I can find on an Em/Proof falling out is some annotation on Rap Genius that has no citation.
I can understand you wanting him to speak out against black problems seeing as he's made a career in a black culture, but Em doesn't speak out about white problems either. That's just not who he is, and you're expecting him to be someone different/blaming him for not being someone you want/expect. That's not his fault, that's yours for placing your own expectations upon him.
As I've already said - he made some dumb mistakes when he was a kid. Other than a few songs he made when he was 16, has he done anything else to even remotely suggest he's even a little bit racist? Because I haven't seen anything. Young people sometimes do/say immature things or have immature thoughts. But people change and grow. You act like Eminem at 16 years old defines who he is as a person, throughout his entire life.
I'll re-write on a topic I've already touched on. Tupac said:
"Measure a man by his actions, fully, from beginning to end. Don't take a piece out of my life or a song out of my music and say this is what I'm about. 'Cause you know better than that."
You're strictly paying attention to one point in his life at 16 years old. What about the other 25 years since they? Why don't they hold any bearing? How does his best friend Proof not count for anything? How does him supporting black artists (and continue to do so) from his hometown, even when they never brought any real revenue/success (and aren't even on his label anymore) not count for anything? Em is around black people non stop all the time in his career. Yet you have not heard a single thing from anyone else or from Em himself even hinting that he's had any kinds of issues with black people. As you saw with that soccer player - after a while people's true selves tend to show themselves, and Em has not shown anything in the past 25 years to give the impression that he's a racist.
If some 16 year old robs a few stores or gets arrested a few times, are you going to hold that against him for the rest of their life? Does that small portion of his life mean you now define/label him as a thief/criminal now for the rest of his life without taking into account the person he has become and the person he is today?
And in this interview you can tell Em is pretty genuine about how he felt about Proof and how it affected him.
Starting @2:30-4:30
