Kanye at Howard and the Spectacular Failure of Celebrity
His recent ahistorical statements should be reason enough to distance ourselves from him
Almost a decade ago, Texas public schools came under fire for adopting a new social studies curriculum in which slavery was characterized as “unpaid labor” and a form of indentured servitude, as opposed to the dehumanizing, exploitative, and vicious trade of human beings that it was. Countless lies have been told throughout the whitewashing of our history to make White people more comfortable with their slaveholding ancestors and allow anti-Black folks to continue blaming members of their own community for systemic oppression.
It’s the perpetuation of this lie that allows people like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to say that no one alive today was responsible for slavery, so there is no need for reparations, while ignoring how our government has been complicit in the continued destruction of the Black community, where the theft of Black wealth and the reverberations of slavery remain ever present.
When I think about the centuries of sacrifice that our ancestors endured and yet somehow maintained their ability to dream about, to pray for, to envision freedom that millions would not see, my heart breaks. So when I hear the likes of Kanye West once…
