I wrote about Kanye on Monday and I am writing about him again today and maybe tomorrow. Why is our recent experience with Kanye important to you as a Cameroonian? Well, I guess you remember how we all got angry when our very own artists stayed silent during the anglophone crises. If you are going to treat Kanye like how most of you are treating him now, who will ever risk anything to speak up for you again?
In a conversation of more than 15 minutes, we picked out a few seconds of something Kanye said that we could easily disagree with and used that to question his intellectual authority/worthiness while letting many other more positive statements fly over our heads. Kanye is who he is because unlike many of us who are cowards, he is never afraid of saying what he thinks. He might be wrong more times than we are but he is also right more times than we are.
Ok. Slavery was not a choice, then what?
I can tell you right now that slavery ended because the white man had no choice (Think hard about this one.) They didn’t really end it actually and I will tell you how. They just did a remix and we milly rocked to it. Before I get to that, let me finish with Kanye.
Kanye got backlash for meeting with Trump. He wanted to know how Trump can help stop the murders of young black men in Chicago by other black men - he claims that was his mission. Trump is the voted president of the US. Yes he might have said some things that make him look racist or maybe he is even racist. Whatever the case he is still the one with the most power to help you out of a situation. I understand that you might be confused by something like this and it might look like betrayal almost but we cant be more focused on anger than we are on finding solutions. We didn't care what he met with Trump for - it just wasn't good looks. I know the guy said he would have voted for Trump but that's probably why he didn't vote. Because if he voted he would have voted for Trump. He was trying to send us a message which I said even before Trump won - political correctness is out of fashion in that part of the world. Even well meaning persons need to know how to get dirty to be cool.
Back to the substance!
The laws that got Meek Mill to prison for popping a wheelie and the 3-strike laws that have many young black men separated from their families today were put in place by Hilary Clinton’s husband. You think she really cares about black people if it’s not in her interest? No matter who is president, our job is to show them how helping the black community is in their interests. Slavery and racism are things that exist only within the context of an economy. Those are not independent things. It is economic warfare and nothing else. All your cries about race are listened to unless when it comes to something that will empower the black man financially. Whatever happened to ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer' anyway? We are quick to post the quotes up on our walls but we never seem to apply them. We are in this position because we trusted some people we didn't have to trust. We better learn the real rules of the game if we really want to bend or change them. On a more positive note, “Where nature makes natural allies of us all, we can demonstrate that beneficial relations are possible even with those with whom we most deeply disagree - and this must someday be the basis of world peace and world law.”- John F. Kennedy.
Kanye told a story of how his step brother Rob was shamed online for his fat belly and had to skip his wedding. That led him to doing liposuction on himself and he got put on opioids that he got addicted to. Remember Kanye’s mom died from complications from a plastic surgery procedure and he is going ahead to do the same thing. Yea, you can say that’s rich people problems. I say where is the empathy. If the man passed by here today we won’t stop chasing him down the streets and because we listened to his songs for our entertainment he is supposed to give up his freedom for us and we have the right to insult him and he has no right to say something we don’t agree with? I don’t remember playing any artists' song because I wanted them to become rich and famous. If we all held ourselves more responsible, change will come quicker.
Of course Kanye should be more responsible because he has such a huge voice in the culture. The only reason we are this angry at Kanye is because we know deep down that he has been one of our biggest champions so it hurts for him to say something that looks like he is no longer on our side. As it stands, he is the only one that has proven time and time again that he can sacrifice his personal gains for US. Most black celebrities play it safe to protect their earnings. More than once, Kanye has risked his entire career for black people. I am still waiting for him to mess up big time. I counted Kim as a blunder. I mean I even lost some of my respect for him when he married Kim but then I thought about it again and said for the sake of love, let him have that one. I don't think my parents will endorse my choice for a wife.
Van, the TMZ employee who everyone is praising for putting Kanye in his place argued with Kanye when Kanye said there are no marches when a black person kills another black person but we march when a white man kills a black man - yet, there are more black on black murders than there are white on black murders. Van’s argument was that there are many people working in the black community who have dedicated their lives to solving black on black crime but they just don’t get that much light on them and they are the ones to be empowered. Well that’s true but if you never march when a black man kills another black man, what do you expect? How then do they get that spotlight? This again shows we are more focused on finding things to make us angry rather than trying to solve our real problems. We react more to our emotions than to our sense of reason. Of the many very important and empowering things Kanye said, Van interrupted him to say he is not thinking clearly and his only raft to hold on to was Kanye’s comment about slavery being a choice. And that is the media for you. Pick and amplify the bad because we have been conditioned to react more to bad than to good. That is why you don’t feel the obligation to invest in your friends business but you feel the need to make it to his funeral.
Kanye said things like we need to talk about history but not for too long. What about now.? We have to move from the mindset of this is the reality we have been given to we can create our own reality. We are here trying to solve a problem forgetting that nobody alive today was a slave and nobody alive today was a slave owner. We are pointing fingers at those who didn’t really commit the crime. Even in our local communities in the capitalistic world that we live in, we are all trying to maintain our competitive advantage. You think you can convince people who are all acting within the confines of the 'law' to give up their competitive advantage by showing anything else other than love or money? We are mad at Trump for closing the borders and putting travel bans on certain countries. That sucks and I know Trump doesn't care about you and me but I think the solution has to come from building your own country so that your people won’t even need to go to America. Maybe Trump is forcing us to fix up our own countries so we can be treated with a little bit more respect by other countries.
Kanye is preaching get your money, open a business and Trump is making owning a business easier for 'everyone' in America. The 14th amendment is there to ensure that but we are letting someone else exploit something which was done for ‘our benefit.’ Childish Gambino in his message packed art marvel ‘this is America’ has the hook going “black man black man get your money.”
Any-Ha!
Back to how slavery was remixed on our watch.
Let me tell you something interesting about the 14th amendment of the US constitution. It was passed in ‘favor’ of the black community because through it slavery was banned. It offered protection and equal rights to life, property, and liberty for everyone born or naturalized in America. it was the 14th amendment that freed slaves.
Do you know who has gained the most from this amendment? - CORPORATIONS. You see before, corporations in America could not do things like own other corporations. They were chartered mostly to do public contracts for the government. The had a cap on their capitalization, activity, and lifespan stipulated in their charters. A corporation was almost like a gift from the people to a group of people for service to the community. The civil war and the industrial revolution led to the growth of corporations who now wanted more power to operate freely. When the 14th amendment was passed, lawyers of corporations argued that a corporation was a person and the Supreme Court caved (maybe that was the original plan. They say always follow the money.) I’m sure you have learned that a corporation is a person in your economics class. Well here is how it happened. Between 1890 and 1910 there were 307 cases brought before the court under the 14th amendment. 288 were by corporations and 19 by black Americans. What’s even funny is that by law, the corporation actually has more liberties than an actual person like the right to sue the government which you and I don't have.
POINT IS -
We are fighting for more opportunity when we have not made good use of the ones we currently have. More than 600,000 people were slain in the civil right war and a law was passed only for corporations to Hijack it from the people for financial gains with the help of judges? And we have black judges like the one on Meek Mills case who did everything in her power to keep the guy in jail despite even her superiors and colleagues who happen to be white disagreeing with the harshness of her punishment. Thank God for the black people that took to the streets to protest that. I wish the whole Black Lives Matter community came out for this one. But No, Meek Mill doesn’t get our sympathy because he is a thug rapper making a couple of millions. Imagine seeing your father get gunned down at age 5 and growing up how he grew up.
Fortunately or unfortunately, people like Kanye are the poster children for black people and when they go down, the whole black community goes with them. As Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, “Kurt Cobain’s death was a great tragedy for his legions of fans. Tupac’s was a tragedy for an entire people. When brilliant black artists fall down on the stage, they don’t fall down alone.” When Kanye went about ranting about how he wouldn’t be let or helped into the fashion insdustry, many people told him to shut up, influential voices like Charlemagne told him they don’t want to hear nothing from him but the music. People wanted to put a limit on his potential. Today someone who came up under Kanye’s fashion house is heading Louis Vuitton and Kanye is building shoe factories and has one of the hottest selling shoes in the world. What does that mean for black empowerment?
So what he wore a jacket with a confederate flag? Do you know how much power and meaning he took away from that flag by doing that? We can keep focusing on the one thing that he said wrong or we can look at the many things we have done wrong and try to fix those. I mean we now own exclusive rights to the word 'Nigger.' Something that was used to degrade us. We turned it into somewhat a force for us.
‘Jesus Walks’ is arguably one of Kanye’s biggest musical production and was one of those songs that catapulted him to his current status as one of if not the greatest Hip Hop producer of all time and even one of the greatest musical artists of all time. Yet, Kanye west played the song for one of the greatest Hip Hip labels at the time and didn’t get a record deal.
That we have Kanye today is thanks to a guy called Dame Dash who has since been blackballed from Hollywood for being just like Kanye - outspoken, freethinking, and a proponent of choosing a victor mentality over a victim mentality. A mindset of creating black business owners instead of having black people work of others. This is not the first time that by breaking the shackles of control, Kanye has been touted to be a psychotic. Unfortunately for those who want to shadow the enlightenment the guy brings, his influence rather increases after every try to delegitimize his opinions.
I want to remind you that hip hop is not a culture run by black people for black people. It was since hijacked by people with a non black agenda and that is why the message of Hip Hop has mostly been guns, sex, and drugs. Find out who Lyor Cohen is.
Kanye brought something different and when he first came, Jay-Z didn’t think he was gangster enough for Hip Hop. He made people like me think to be a respectable black man, being a thug was not all I can be. WHAT NOW?
Kanye's problem is he lacks the tact and I am sure we and he have established that. Now let's focus on the content because it matters more than the form. Kanye needs to be schooled on many things. So do you and I and we all know it. I would tell Kanye to be more careful and more aware of the environment, circumstances, and the climate but then I'm worried that he will never say anything again. I don't know about you, but I'll rather have people speak and make mistakes that have them silent.
That said, these are complex problems that we need to chip at bit by bit. One statement or article does not do it. The struggle will never be over.
- Tino Foy