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Maybe We Should Cut Kanye a Little Bit of Slack

I watched most of the TMZ interview of Kanye West with my mouth open wide in incredulity. I wanted to see if he really said that accepting 400 years of enslavement in America was a choice made by black Africans or if maybe he’d been quoted out of context (he did, he wasn’t).

I don’t listen to his music and had never really paid much attention to him before the widespread vilification of both he and his comments, so as I listened to his point of view, my mouth widened in astonishment as I realized that the deep thoughts he worked so hard to express were mostly the incoherent ramblings of what sounded like a fool.

This, I thought in amazement, is what’s influencing our young people?

Kanye West’s statement on slavery in America has been condemned as ignorant, uninformed and Uncle Tomish, and even though his comments have been referred to as the babbling of an idiot, I’m thinking that perhaps the almost universal disdain for his position is misplaced and that maybe we should cut Kanye a bit of slack.

Because now people are at least talking about slavery in the US and by extension the multi-century terror endured by African men, women and children throughout much of the free world. Folks are newly aware of the “Peculiar Institution” on which the United States rose to prominence.

The Institution which legalized and normalized stealing the lives of generation after multiple generation of human beings, by rationalizing its deeds as “for their own good”.

The Institution that used the forced labor of black folks, in perpetual bondage and servitude, as the foundation from which to build fortunes and provide prosperity for a precious few.

The Institution which allowed separate and unequal opportunities for white and black Americans and reinforced a system that for hundreds upon hundreds of years supported brutality, inequality, fear, ignorance and apathy.
The Institution that put and kept shackles on the minds of millions of black people throughout the world and in the process wounded all of us; black, white and other.

The Institution of slavery in our Nation’s history is a taboo subject that we don’t talk to each other about. That’s why we haven’t been able to remove its stain from our collective souls.

The wounds to our psyche won’t scab over however, and the hole in our Nation’s soul won’t be closed until we apply the salve of dialogue and the bandage of understanding.

Let’s start that conversation. Let’s dialogue to mend the past-inflicted injuries and begin to heal. Maybe Kanye’s “foot in mouth” diatribe can be the catalyst to jump start the discussion.