Move over, Donald Trump — your Three Ring Circus has a new clown. Yes, rapper Kanye West inserted himself under the “Big Top” yesterday by telling TMZ that he believes slavery was “a choice.”
(PAUSE HERE TO LET THAT STATEMENT SINK IN FOR A MOMENT)
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Just in case you thought you might have been hallucinating while reading that last paragraph, rest assured you read it correctly. During a wild and chaotic interview on TMZ, Kanye made jaws visibly drop by flat-out suggesting blacks were enslaved by their own choosing.
“When you hear about slavery for 400 years — for 400 years? That sounds like a choice,” he said.
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“You [were] there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all. It’s like we’re mentally in prison,” Kanye added. “I like the word ‘prison’ because ‘slavery’ goes too direct to the idea of Blacks. Slavery is to Blacks as the Holocaust is to Jews. So prison is something that unites us as one race, blacks and whites being one race. We’re the human race.”
Kanye then quickly segued the conversation into his heavy bromance with Donald Trump.
Calling the current White House occupant “my boy,” Kanye laid on the accolades.
“I just love Trump,” he said. “They [other rappers] don’t want to love him” but “Trump is one of rap’s favorite people.”
Mere moments after the TMZ interview aired, the general public, at large, went berserk over Kanye’s crazed comments.
“Those comments show how completely out of touch Kanye is at this moment in time, and I think they would have his mother Donda West, a former college professor, enraged,” said Tanisha Ford, associate professor of Africana studies and history at the University of Delaware.
“It’s a far-cry from the Kanye West we knew who made the song ‘Crack Music,’ which made a link between slavery, the prison industrial complex and the rise of crack cocaine used in the black community.”
Social media also ran amok over the bizarre remarks.
“Kanye’s rhetoric continues to fuel the racist right-wing folks who believe that black people are responsible for their oppression,” said Twitter user @deray.
Kanye “is not a free thinker. He is a free moron who doesn’t read,” said Roxane Gay.
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I don’t have the energy for nonsense but Kanye saying slavery was a choice reiterates my previous statements about how dangerous his trite, shallow ramblings are. He is not a free thinker. He is a free moron who doesn’t read. Do not @ me.
— roxane gay (@rgay) May 1, 2018
Kanye is a dangerous caricature of an “free thinking” black person in America. Frankly, I am disgusted and I’m over it. Also (I can’t believe I have to say this): Slavery was far from a choice.
— Symone D. Sanders (@SymoneDSanders) May 1, 2018
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However, it was TMZ reporter Van Lathan who made the most memorable response when he stood up during the interview and directly challenged Kanye for his dangerous remarks.
“I think what you’re doing right now is actually the absence of thought. And the reason why I feel like that is because, Kanye, you’re entitled to your opinion. You’re entitled to believe whatever you want. But there is fact, and real-world, real-life consequence behind everything that you just said,” Lathan scolded.
He continued, “And while you are making music and being an artist and living the life that you’ve earned by being a genius, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats to our lives. We have to deal with the marginalization that has come from the 400 years of slavery that you said, for our people, was a choice.”
Lathan added that he was “disappointed,” “appalled,” and “unbelievably hurt” that West had “morphed into something, to me, that’s not real.”
Later in the day, Kanye took to social media to complain about how misunderstood his words were by the public.
“We need to have open discussions and ideas on unsettled pain,” Kanye said in a series of tweets. “To make myself clear. Of course I know that slaves did not get shackled and put on a boat by free will. My point is for us to have stayed in that position even though the numbers were on our side means that we were mentally enslaved. They cut out our tongues so we couldn’t communicate to each other. I will not allow my tongue to be cut.”
Is this the beginning of the end for Kanye West? Or, have we already passed that exit on the highway?
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I seriously think Kanye has a mental problem. When his mother was alive she kept it in check but now that she died and he is around those Kardashians he can’t hid it anymore. He is one of those people who is a genius but crazy at the same time. I know a lot of people are getting mad about what he said about slavery but I feel sorry for him. I really think he is sick in the head and doesn’t always know what he is doing or saying.