Kanye West has been ruffling a lot of liberal feathers lately, but he outright enraged whole swaths of people when he recently suggested to TMZ that 400 years of slavery was “a choice.”
Here are West’s full comments in context, because as we all know context is everything:
“When you hear about slavery for 400 years — for 400 years? That sounds like a choice,” West told the TMZ newsroom. “Like, you were there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all?”
“It’s like we’re mentally imprisoned,” he added.
West later took to Twitter to clarify his comments, explaining, “Of course I know that slaves did not get shackled and put on a boat by free will.” He continued, “The reason why I brought up the 400 years point is because we can’t be mentally imprisoned for another 400 years. We need free thought now. Even that statement was an example of free thought. It was just an idea.”
While those tweets have since been deleted, West also tweeted that we need to “update our conversation” about race issues and teach children to look to the future rather than the past.
we are programmed to always talk and fight race issues. We need to update our conversation.
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) May 1, 2018
in school we need to learn how magic Johnson built his business not always about the past. Matter fact I’ve never even heard of a high school class that presents future ideas
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) May 1, 2018
Well, there’s certainly a lot to unpack here. There’s no denying that slavery is, unfortunately, a major part of America’s history, and it’s played an unfortunately large hand in shaping the progress of our country.
But there’s something to be said for West’s argument that we need to seriously update the way we talk about and view race relations. A constant focus on the evils of the past breeds nothing but contempt, entitlement, and more systemic racism (reparation payments, anyone?). Indeed, while West’s argument that slavery was a choice was absolutely incorrect, the point he communicated on Twitter is worth consideration.
But, unfortunately, liberals don’t want to consider it. In fact, they don’t want to listen to West at all. On Thursday, a Detroit radio station announced that they’re banning West’s music, including tracks he produced or featured on, indefinitely.
“We feel like Kanye has gone too far with his latest statement declaring that ‘slavery was a choice.’ We are over it,” hosts Shay Shay and BiGG posted on Facebook with the hashtag “Mute Kanye.”
“We don’t want to hear Kanye’s music, we don’t want to play Kanye on our show, we don’t want to talk about Kanye anymore. So we are taking a stand and we aren’t playing his music anymore; we just are refusing to give him a platform.”
This is a messy situation. West should never have said that slavery was “a choice” – it wasn’t. But the underlying argument that West has been making for weeks is that African-Americans should think for themselves rather than go along with the progressive/liberal/Democrat hive-mind just because that’s what’s expected of them. And if liberals are so unwilling to give a platform to free thought, then they have much bigger problems on hand than our country’s history of race relations.
What do you think about Kanye West’s comments? Share your thoughts below.
