There have been articles upon articles on news sites, buzzfeed, etc talking about the imagery in the Music Video. As someone whose worked in the Music Industry before, both as a Sound Engineer and Musician, The Music Video although is of great importance to a musician, the biggest thing for us is that our lyrics are actually being taken in, listened to and are making the impact we want them to. No one from what i have seen has talked about the Economic significance that Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino is talking about in the actual song. In the song, the line "Get your money, black man" is repeated about 11 times in the whole song, the images towards the end of the Music Video are in reference to that line, I'm going to break it down across national boundaries, talk about the Economic inequalities between Blacks and Whites in America and the United Kingdom (since those are the two countries i feel i know enough about to talk about it).
-- You Go tell somebody, You mothafuckers owe me --
Mr Glover is making quite a significant statement, by showing the opposite of what is shown in most rap videos, rather than someone dancing on top of expensive cars to show how much wealth they have, Glover chooses to show off older, cheaper and especially more run down cars. On one hand this is indeed showing that Society in America and much of the western world hasn't actually progressed past the old traditions but he's actually showing off the cars that a majority of African Americans can afford, this is good place to start because the reason why these are the cars African-Americans can afford is because the Median Household Income of White Families is 1.5x the Income that Black Families get in America, as shown in a study conducted by the Pew Research Centre in 2014.
-- Get your money, black man --
This gap also expands to the burden that debt (especially student debt) disproportionately affects African-Americans more than White Americans and even Hispanic Americans. As shown in a study for the survey of consumer finances looking from 1983 to 2016, African Americans have a 9% lead on the amount of shared student debt than Whites in America. If you look at another study of the Census' from 1980 to 2016 (Below) you can see that when there is a Republican Majority the Median income for black families drops (hold on republicans, i'll get to the democrats in a second), whilst when Democrats get in it goes back to what it was either a year before or a few terms before but never much more than what it was before. For example, In the Obama years, you can see that it dropped for a while, but towards his last days in office it spiked again, but was only an increase of $229 from the end of George W Bush's term, that's only an extra $4 per week for a year that they got extra. The more observant of you would have noticed that $39k median income is not equality, Black families are still at a disadvantage even when democrats are in charge.
-- Across the Pond: Is it any different? --
In the UK, It's not much better, It's better but only barely. According to Government Statistics published in 2017, Black households are more likely to make less than £400 per week than other Ethnic groups, with Indian households being the most likely to have a weekly income of over £1000 in contrast to only 16% of Black households. These numbers much like the disparities between Republican and Democrat haven't really changed that drastically between Labour and Conservative Government's they mostly stay around the same overall statistics. (graph below)
-- In conclusion --
Unfortunately, it seems as though from the statistics it makes very little to no difference whether a Republican or Democrat is in charge, either one is not leading to equality in Median wages between the races. From what i can see, when the income goes down for African-American households it tends to go up for White Americans, Albeit already rich white Americans, not the white working class or middle class in America. When "changes" have been made to improve Black household incomes, what has ended up happening is taking some money from poor white families and giving it to rich white families, the black families income still goes down but makes the black working class feel better because they see their white working class neighbours see the same thing happening to them.
The stark contrast in America between the Incomes and debts shared across racial groups is astounding for a country of its size, which we don't really see anywhere else in the world. Or at least not quite to the same extent as the United States, for better or for worst it seems that the African-American working class are in a perpetual cycle of having their wages cut then raised, it almost reminds me of the "Good times versus the Bad times" in Ireland after they went bankrupt, the good times where people had money they spent it all, then the bad times came around and they didn't have any money to rely on. Leaving them in a cycle of regardless of whether its the good times or the bad, they are still stockpiling money away and thus don't have any disposable income to spend on their kids and families.
This Financial instability in the States as well as Britain can lead to a disproportionate number of Black people being arrested for Crimes such as Shoplifting, theft and Assault just to put food on the table for their families, because like the imagery from "This is America" shows with the Old cars, America has not progressed and whilst some African-American Rappers who are more affluent than Mr Glover dance around on cars they as an individual can afford, odds are those rappers own families back home are struggling to put food on the table or being unable to buy toys for their kids. With the rise in gun violence from police to minorities in America, this is just going to lead to a cat chasing its tail scenario, and eventually, sooner or later, one side is going to loose it and America might actually end up on the brink of another Civil War. Because if we've learned anything from Basic American history, America doesn't take serious social issues to the polls, they arm up and fight each other over it in Civil Wars.