With his recent comments about slavery, Kanye West may have just waded into his biggest controversy yet.
During a Tuesday appearance on TMZ Live, the rapper talked about his relationship with President Donald Trump and mused on a number of different subjects. Then he made a claim that was shocking even for him.
“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.
TMZ employee Van Lathan quickly rebuffed West’s comments. “I actually don’t think you are thinking anything,” he told the rapper in a clip that quickly went viral. “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.”
West’s comments come after a spate of tweets over the past week where he’s shared a number of personal and political opinions. On April 21, West tweeted favorably about right-wing commentator and Black Lives Matter critic Candace Owens. Later that week, he expressed his love for Trump, and shared photos of himself in a Make America Great Again hat autographed by the president, photos that were later shared on Trump’s Twitter. When his famous friends texted him to disagree with his comments, West shared screenshots of those responses too.
With each comment, West has argued that he is simply being a “free thinker.” But with his most recent remarks, he has only shown just how little he understands.
West’s slavery comments highlight a deeper issue with how US history is understood
The backlash to West’s TMZ comments was swift. Several celebrities weighed in on social media, criticizing his words. Director Spike Lee urged him to “WAKE UP,” and writer Roxane Gay tweeted that West “is not a free thinker. He is a free moron who doesn’t read.”
During an interview with Good Morning Britain, musician Will.i.am also shared his thoughts. “I understand the need to have free thought, but if your thoughts aren’t researched, that is just going to hurt those that are still in conditions where it’s not choice,” he said.
Twitter users started the hashtag #IfSlaveryWasAChoice to share their thoughts about Kanye’s comments, with some sharing jokes and others seeking to educate the rapper on why his comments were off base. Historians participated as well.
“Slavery wasn’t their choice at any step,” Blair L.M. Kelley, an associate professor at North Carolina State University, tweeted, referring to Africans who were captured and forcibly brought to the US as slaves. “Denigrating their lives at this point for attention and spare change is such an embarrassment,” she added.
In the hours since the exchange about slavery, West has been on the defensive. He’s sent a flood of tweets defending his initial comments, and shared a quote that has long been falsely attributed to Harriet Tubman. He’s also compared himself to both Tubman and Nat Turner, the leader of a slave rebellion in 1831.
to make myself clear. Of course I know that slaves did not get shackled and put on a boat by free will
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) May 1, 2018
“Of course I know that slaves did not get shackled and put on a boat by free will,” West wrote on Twitter. “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.”
West also tweeted that he was “being attacked for presenting new ideas.” It’s a claim that he’s raised repeatedly in recent days, where he presents himself as a “free thinker” who is sharing hard truths about race.
While West’s arguments may be surprising coming from a musician who once rapped about “trying to buy back our 40 acres,” and who famously declared that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” after Hurricane Katrina, they aren’t new.
Whether he’s aware of it or not, West is speaking to a broader false narrative about slavery that has long existed — one that argues enslaved people were happy with their position.
It’s a narrative that’s used to invoke the argument that the Civil War was fought not to preserve slavery but to defend states’ rights. It’s a narrative in which Confederate generals are recast as honorable men acting out of a sense of duty, rather than acting on a desire to keep other people enslaved — people whose labor was worth billions of dollars and provided the economic engine that built America.
It’s a narrative that ignores the men, women, and children forcibly removed from their homes and separated from their families, and it’s a narrative that ignores those who fought to be free, risking their lives to escape plantations. For those who didn’t escape, this narrative blames them for the bondage forced upon them.
West’s comments aren’t a difference in opinion brought on by enlightened thought, as he’s trying to portray them — they are a rejection of history and of facts. And it’s only by recognizing this harmful narrative for what it is that we can begin to confront the past and try to rectify it.