AND HE IS NOT ALONE
In case you can't tell, let me inform you that I am not a fan of Kanye West. I haven't been one for a long time. In fact, I'm pretty anti-Kanye.
But I was a big fan for a minute or two when he first started. During a critical moment of the Hurricane Katrina Crisis, he said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people." I fell out of my chair laughing over his audacity. A lot of people did. It was an angry laughter though. So many black people were dead and displaced and our government, led by George Bush, was barely moving to help them.
But that was before Kanye's Mama died. He ain't been right since.
For a long time I made the excuse he was in mourning when he said something stupid and/or offensive. Then I started making the excuse that he was just young. Then somebody told me he was closing in on 40 years old (a few years back) and I had to admit that it wasn't youth that informed his arrogance and ridiculousness.
I had to admit he's just an arrogant @$$, mourning or not.
By the time Kanye said a couple of things about black and brown women, I was done with him. So I may have overreact a bit when he said "Me and a lot of my friends like...mutts" (translation: light-skinned, mix raced women)
Now Kanye is saying he would have voted for Mean Tangerine if he had voted. And he said this ignorant crap after MT has assigned a white nationalist to be his chief strategist.
For those that think Kanye is intelligent, let me remind you that for every quasi-wise thing Kanye says, he says 6 idiotic things. And if a person talks long enough that person will eventually say something that sounds profound. It's a matter of time. So I'm not impressed with Kanye's silly @$$ --even without the colorism b.s. he uttered to cover up the fact that he uses a paper bag test to decide who he's going to date and/or marry.
I'm just as unimpressed Azealia Banks' and her attempts to stay relevant by saying outrageous things. But what's interesting here is how Banks gets called everything but a child of gawd when she says anything off the wall. She got dragged, and rightfully so, when she said she supports Trump, a white man that would annihilate all people of color with a snap of a finger if he could.
The difference between Azealia and Kanye get treated is obvious.
We shouldn't give our money, time, and support to anybody, no matter what race or ethnicity they are, if they are going to influence others to vote for a misogynistic, homophobic, islamophobic white supremacist no matter what the basis of their attraction to the misogynistic, homophobic, islamophobic white supremacist actually is.
So, I am not advocating that Azealia be treated like Kanye. I don't want to see her dragged anymore. But I am suggesting that we make sure all of our self-hating attention addicts disappear from public life. People of color can make that happen by not supporting them. This is important because every single person of color these stars influence toward Trump from their platform harms us all.
Therefore, I don't care how minuscule famous POC political efforts in supporting Trump were in the past or will be in the future, Kanye, Azealia, Dwayne the Rock Johnson have the ability to provide real voter support to overt white supremacy candidates.
And if some people of color don't think there's a difference between how fast overt white racism moves versus covert white racism, then the Bleached Blond Dragon is about to give them a lesson.
If some don't think there's differences in levels and types of white racism, that means they've been living in fear and trembling before they've even seen and experienced peak white violence -- and they haven't read very much detail about peak white violence in black history books either. (Not knowing your history can be deadly. POC's should be nervous if not outright scared now.)
In case you called in sick for few weeks and missed it:
Kanye West has been babbling about how Jay Z and Beyonce's child can't play with his children anymore -- in addition to talking smack about a BeyHive protected Beyonce who won some award he thought he should have won
Not long after the election, Kanye called out the black audience members from the stage and said something to the effect of 'If I woulda voted I would'a voted for Trump' and told them to stop talking about racism so much.
Black audience members handed him his head. (boo-ed him)
Kanye flounced off stage after only 3 songs
I'm assuming promoters/show runners have to refund the audience's money
THEN Kanye decides he won't do the rest of his tour
I'm assuming promoters/tour runners have to refund a lot more money
All of a sudden Kanye's sick with "exhaustion" and cancel's his tour -- It's been reported that he was committed involuntarily
Me? I'm not going for this. I tend to think his family and lawyers started thinking Kanye looked "exhausted" and needed a rest in a mental institution just about the time they figured out there was a possibility of their meal ticket being sued by everybody who sponsored his tour.
I mean, how many millions just went up in smoke for Kanye new-ish extended family and his managers because he canceled a tour based on being booed. And all because he can't stop seeing himself as a black unicorn every single time he passes a mirror?
It's true that Kanye could be having a real nervous breakdown --since he's not wrapped too tight to begin with. But I think this breakdown is legally convenient coming on the heels of hissy fit that began on a stage and lasted long enough for him to cancel an entire tour.
More than that, I don't know that extreme arrogance and a dedication to "I'm sooo different" and I'm going to prove it just by saying crap that's different than most black folks with common sense actually qualifies as "mental illness."
I dated a guy who lived to be different. LIVED. FOR. IT. And it sort of felt like it should be put in the "mental illness" box. but I don't think it actually is -- dysfunctional or not.
Ultimately though, what one believes about Kanye (Azealia or Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) doesn't matter though. The solution is the same.
To the left, to the left
To the left, to the left (mmmmmm)
To the left, to the left
Everything you own in the box to the left
In the closet that's my stuff
Yes, if I bought it, please don't touch
And keep talking that mess that's fine
But could you walk and talk at the same time
Standing in the front yard
Tellin' me, how I'm such a fool
Talkin' 'bout, I'll never ever find a man like you
You got me twisted
You must not know about me,
you must not know about me...
Don't you ever for a second get to thinking
You're irreplaceable
So go ahead and get gone...
Beyonce's Song
Irreplaceable
But I was a big fan for a minute or two when he first started. During a critical moment of the Hurricane Katrina Crisis, he said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people." I fell out of my chair laughing over his audacity. A lot of people did. It was an angry laughter though. So many black people were dead and displaced and our government, led by George Bush, was barely moving to help them.
Do you remember when Kanye said that? Do you remember the days of Hurricane Katrina? (video below)
Black intellectuals had been using million dollar words to say the same thing about Bush Jr not caring on various news shows when he did not respond to Hurricane Katrina with any urgency seemingly because black neighborhoods were hit hardest. Kanye came right out and said Black people are "being called looters" while white people are said to be "looking for food" when they broke into abandoned grocery stores.
Then Kanye followed up with, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."
My entire family from coast to coast screamed at our televisions in support. My phone was ringing off the hook. We were overjoyed and laughing because he said it but also angry that it had to be said.
Video from back when Kanye sounded like
he was a little "off" but sounded as if he had sense.
"George Bush doesn't care about black people."
But that was before Kanye's Mama died. He ain't been right since.
For a long time I made the excuse he was in mourning when he said something stupid and/or offensive. Then I started making the excuse that he was just young. Then somebody told me he was closing in on 40 years old (a few years back) and I had to admit that it wasn't youth that informed his arrogance and ridiculousness.
I had to admit he's just an arrogant @$$, mourning or not.
By the time Kanye said a couple of things about black and brown women, I was done with him. So I may have overreact a bit when he said "Me and a lot of my friends like...mutts" (translation: light-skinned, mix raced women)
I started calling him "Coonye" in my head a long time ago.
Now Kanye is saying he would have voted for Mean Tangerine if he had voted. And he said this ignorant crap after MT has assigned a white nationalist to be his chief strategist.
For those that think Kanye is intelligent, let me remind you that for every quasi-wise thing Kanye says, he says 6 idiotic things. And if a person talks long enough that person will eventually say something that sounds profound. It's a matter of time. So I'm not impressed with Kanye's silly @$$ --even without the colorism b.s. he uttered to cover up the fact that he uses a paper bag test to decide who he's going to date and/or marry.
I'm just as unimpressed Azealia Banks' and her attempts to stay relevant by saying outrageous things. But what's interesting here is how Banks gets called everything but a child of gawd when she says anything off the wall. She got dragged, and rightfully so, when she said she supports Trump, a white man that would annihilate all people of color with a snap of a finger if he could.
The difference between Azealia and Kanye get treated is obvious.
The same Kanye West, who surprises me by being able to walk and chew gum at the same time since his mama died? For him people cry. For him people mourn the loss of his mind and the strain he must be under. For him people skim through paragraphs of verbal mishmash to find a few sentences they can twist, pretzel-ize and generally reform into wisdom....even after he makes it plain he'd have supported Trump too.
Kanye gets cover.
Azealia gets the boot to the butt.
Blatant racism isn't the only thing that hurts the black community The blatant sexism and toxic masculinity worship revealed by the black community's treatment of Azealia Banks, Nate Parker, Bill Cosby are problems too.
Kanye gets cover.
Azealia gets the boot to the butt.
Blatant racism isn't the only thing that hurts the black community The blatant sexism and toxic masculinity worship revealed by the black community's treatment of Azealia Banks, Nate Parker, Bill Cosby are problems too.
In fact, I think people of color refusing to vote for the HILLARY-BLOCK of Trump in the same way they voted for President Obama may have something to do with Hillary's failure to be a man.
Toxic Masculinity isn't just being repulsed by the control and power of the female. It is also being attracted to the hyper-masculine male. The hyper-masculine hero male in the U.S. is:
- the man with a lot of women,
- the man with a lot of money or
- the man with a lot of power.
- the man with talent enough to be professional athlete
Donald Trump fits the bill as a hyper-masculine, toxic masculinity hero in three out of four areas.
So black folk suffering from a TM mindset are likely as attracted to Kanye as they are repulsed by Azealia. And it follows that Kanye, Dwayne Johnson, LL Cool J and a host of others --in what may be a TM mindset-- are as attracted to Trump as they are repulsed by Hillary.
When you see people like Kanye, The Rock, LL Cool J and more than a few sports figures of various ethnicities, Azealia and Omorosa drool over Trump's unethical path to more riches based on his Daddy's riches, you should probably wonder if they don't feel something close to sexual excitement whenever they Trump or hear him talk.
We shouldn't give our money, time, and support to anybody, no matter what race or ethnicity they are, if they are going to influence others to vote for a misogynistic, homophobic, islamophobic white supremacist no matter what the basis of their attraction to the misogynistic, homophobic, islamophobic white supremacist actually is.
So, I am not advocating that Azealia be treated like Kanye. I don't want to see her dragged anymore. But I am suggesting that we make sure all of our self-hating attention addicts disappear from public life. People of color can make that happen by not supporting them. This is important because every single person of color these stars influence toward Trump from their platform harms us all.
Side Note: White feminists have been asking why white country singer, Taylor Swift, a recently self-proclaimed feminist did not come out in support of Hillary Clinton (which is different from black and brown people voting Clinton to keep Trump out of office) The reason they are asking they think a white feminist should vote for and support a white feminist because they know that most of America isn't that bright.
America, black, brown, white, etc vote the way their favorite stars vote. This is dumb that this is true. It is embarrassing that this is true. But it's still true.
However, it's shockingly ridiculous for white feminists to not understand that white country-western turn pop singer Swift clearly knows her predominantly white audience and their likely love for Donald Trump's mysoginist, racist, homophobic, islamophobic rhetoric. Swift is not Bey. Bey leads her fans. Swift follows hers or at the very least does not say anything contrary to what she can intuit they believe.
And if some people of color don't think there's a difference between how fast overt white racism moves versus covert white racism, then the Bleached Blond Dragon is about to give them a lesson.
If some don't think there's differences in levels and types of white racism, that means they've been living in fear and trembling before they've even seen and experienced peak white violence -- and they haven't read very much detail about peak white violence in black history books either. (Not knowing your history can be deadly. POC's should be nervous if not outright scared now.)
Not to belabor a point, but Trump being a ethnoracist, sexist, homophobic Islamophobe is not a matter of Trump having opinions different than ours.
Racism and Sexism are not opinions. Trump is deficient in character and actively trying to harm people of color and whole host of others that are not white male or attached to white males (white wives) And he has strong leadership skills
Trump's supporters are actually talking about Japanese-like internment camps for Muslims during his "extreme vetting process."
Black and brown people who voted for the HILLARY-BLOCK understand WHO the white people are that supported the Dragon. We are flat out calling these white people racist, sexist, homophobic islamophobes.
And now we need to understand the same thing about people of color.
EVERYBODY that voted for Trump, including POCs, have made it clear that they don't give a damn about themselves as people of color, women, LGBT rights, immigrants, or Muslims. And we need to respond to their disregard of others accordingly.
In other words, Kanye and Azealia are both full of crap. Personal disgust aside, we can't afford to let them fracture a POC vote that is already too fractured.
EVERYBODY that voted for Trump, including POCs, have made it clear that they don't give a damn about themselves as people of color, women, LGBT rights, immigrants, or Muslims. And we need to respond to their disregard of others accordingly.
I saw a tweet from a white person that said, "Just because I voted for Trump doesn't make me a racist."
That has me thinking Kanye and Azealia might say, "Just because I'm inclined to vote for Trump, that doesn't make me a internalized racism sufferer."
A response tweet I read probably applies to both is, "Just because I stabbed a stranger to death with a knife doesn't make me a murderer.
In other words, Kanye and Azealia are both full of crap. Personal disgust aside, we can't afford to let them fracture a POC vote that is already too fractured.
So please stop giving Kanye and Azealia and other public figures that are POC republicans your money. If we push them disappear from public life we limit their political influence on voters who don't like to think that much.
Your young sons, young daughters, and young cousins cannot afford to mistake the foolishness they spout for wisdom. And the rest of us cannot afford to have their fans collude with an ethnoracist, sexist, homophobic Islamophobic man that's creating a White House Staff bent on destroying us.
Trump's staff scares me more than Trump does
* * * * *
Your young sons, young daughters, and young cousins cannot afford to mistake the foolishness they spout for wisdom. And the rest of us cannot afford to have their fans collude with an ethnoracist, sexist, homophobic Islamophobic man that's creating a White House Staff bent on destroying us.
Trump's staff scares me more than Trump does
I don't think Trump has the brains or dedication to run the country. I think his attention seeking is going to take up all of his mind. If he doesn't find a way to quit just so he doesn't have to read a million documents on policy, I think someone on his staff or a group of people on his staff including that white supremacist Bannon, will be running the country.
* * * * *
As for those who believe Kanye and Azealia truly are mentally ill. That's fine. Let them recover permanently in obscurity.
Obscurity is probably the cure they need anyway because I tend to think Kanye and Azealia's breakdowns coincide with drops in their popularity. If they have no popularity to lose, they'll be better off.
Maybe the two of them are creating their own mental illness with their choices toward whiteness or they were made mentally weak by living in oppressive white America. I'm not a psychologist. So I don't know. But whatever's going on with them? They have chosen the side of the deadliest oppressor the black community has had lately.
Mr. I'm sooo different in action
I say his handlers are doing image management. Then again, you almost have to be mentally ill to attack Beyonce knowing the BeyHive is out there waiting to protect her from all comers.
Obscurity is probably the cure they need anyway because I tend to think Kanye and Azealia's breakdowns coincide with drops in their popularity. If they have no popularity to lose, they'll be better off.
Besides, black and brown people who try to side with whiteness, who try to climb inside whiteness are bound to make themselves mentally ill.
Kanye even has white family that fairly republican (as I understand it from reading headlines as I stand on line at the supermarket.) So I am not inclined to feel sorry for him when its clear the mind can't go in two directions at once. The moderate republicans have been filling their swamp with overt racists since Reagan. Mental breakdown in the midst of white supremacy advocates seems inevitable to me.
Clarence Thomas didn't go completely bonkers and start shooting people like we thought he would, but Kanye's choices of Amber Rose and Kim K. as significant others PLUS his implying by word and deed that he doesn't like black women because he favors women closer to whiteness makes a mental breakdown seem likely more than unlikely. Taken together these are all symptoms of self-hate, right?
Anybody who doesn't like half the black race (black women) is self-hating, right? Self-hate indicates mental illness -- whether he is up and happy or down in the dumps and in a mental hospital, yes?
As for Azealia Banks? She actually defends bleaching herself. It seems to me that making yourself whiter also lays out the stepping stones of self-hate toward mental illness.
Maybe the two of them are creating their own mental illness with their choices toward whiteness or they were made mentally weak by living in oppressive white America. I'm not a psychologist. So I don't know. But whatever's going on with them? They have chosen the side of the deadliest oppressor the black community has had lately.
No matter what is or is not wrong with Kanye and Azealia as far as their mental health goes, I think we as black and brown people should boycott anybody that can damage young black and brown fans by spouting self-hating nonsense.
Kanye, The Rock, are Azealia, are not irreplaceable. New artists with a better sense of duty to the black community will be along tomorrow.
* * * * *
Kanye, The Rock, are Azealia, are not irreplaceable. New artists with a better sense of duty to the black community will be along tomorrow.
* * * * *
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***************
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Got boo-ed off stage
Got his feelings hurt
Cancelled his tour
I say his handlers are doing image management. Then again, you almost have to be mentally ill to attack Beyonce knowing the BeyHive is out there waiting to protect her from all comers.
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