I’ve Never Written About Kanye
But now I have to. Because even though I have never strayed into his background, his career, his celebrity, or his impact, he has chosen to wade into my politics.
The unseriousness of his earlier attempts demonstrate the weight of this most recent one. I had no reason to talk about his endorsement of Trump (stunt) or the changes in his aesthetic or the disturbing behavior around his ex-wife because these were all out of my lane. There’s no point to my ruminating about why a prominent and wealthy Black man becomes a Republican. I am the world’s least fashionable person, so I have no room to comment on anyone else’s sartorial decisions. And there are experts in IPV and DV that should be lifted well above me for anything about Kanye and Kim. But antisemitism? That’s my beat.
I am not a JOC or related to any Jewish people by blood. But I am a human fucking being with a soul, so antisemitism really bothers me. It is a supremely fucked up thing to believe, and it is almost always followed by unspeakable tragedies. It is bad. There’s no excuse for it. And it is so deeply embedded in society that the vast majority of us have been exposed to it pretty regularly. Which is why calling it out has to be done as often and as loudly as possible.
What Kanye West said was a very serious threat against a group of millions of people in this country. It was designed to make them afraid of government force breaking apart their lives. It was designed to drive a wedge between two overlapping groups by simultaneously invoking whiteness and removing its protection. And most terribly, it was designed to make people nod.
The approval is the danger, the canary in the coalmine. We have political figures saying that it’s ok to target a minority religious community. This is already a faith that has experienced an extreme rise in hate crimes, has been historically targeted (most recently by EXACTLY WHO YOU THINK), and has been able to broadly thrive in this country because of religious tolerance. This isn’t just an “echo” of the past; this is the list of rights and responsibilities they are aiming to destroy. They are going to tolerate crimes perpetrated against some people, like their historical antecedents, by taking a wrecking ball to the First Amendment and the presumed wall between Church and State (which has been pockmarked and partially demolished for years).
Antisemitism is harmful, dangerous, and terrorizing to Jewish people, but it is also harmful to the country and the fabric they are part of. We shouldn’t accept this kind of threat to anyone, anywhere, but especially people who have spent centuries fleeing prosecution and oppression. The entire conceit of this project that makes it at all worth saving is the idea that we are supposed to be different than all the regimes that have come before.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provinvial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.” ”
Of course that has not ever been our reality. The painful truth of the damage we have done to each other in our survival in this country is precisely the fault line Kanye has dug deep into. Ever since whiteness was invented, Black people have distrusted Europeans who are enveloped by it — even when they, like Jewish people have often been, are separated within. The skeptical distrust between Black and Jewish communities receives far more attention than the spaces where they proudly and happily overlap. And Kanye West is the puppet for starting this messy show to distract us.
Because we are all in danger. Jews are in danger; Black people are in danger; queer people are in danger; Latin people are in danger (even the people who think I’m going to go first). And if you feel left out of that incomplete list, then democracy itself is in danger, girl!
Focusing on that is what we should be doing instead of parsing out whether Black people are responsible for denouncing a man who has previously told us that slavery was our own fault! Kanye isn’t saying this stuff with a crowd of Black people behind him. He’s saying it in rooms brimming with red hats. He’s saying it to white men, performing for them, giving them his cultural cache and far-reaching platform to let them know that he can spew hate like a pro.
And just like any useful Dunning-Kruger mannequin that furthers their quest for power, he will be tossed away as soon as the Republican Party has gotten what it wants. Kanye West is just an empty vessel with a Black face, gifting conservatives plausible deniability and new ways to say the same shit they’ve been wrong about a million times before. This isn’t about speaking truth to power or breaking from outmoded thinking or anything other than the naked grab for wealth and influence that it looks like. He’s giving them a platform for their disgusting revanchism, and he’s being provided with an even deeper cocoon of privilege and sycophancy.
I’m speaking up because none of this is about Kanye West, his past, his work, his celebrity. It is about the agendas of people seeking power, about what they ask for and what they condone in its pursuit, and what they hope to get out of it. I’ve read the history books; I’ve learned the signs; I’ve listened to survivors and heard their warnings. And I know that if the likes of Kanye is vomiting antisemitism, it’s because hatred is the bridge between where we are and where Republicans would like us to be.
