Just when you thought there could never be a Black man more self-hating than Michael Jackson, Kanye West (or “Ye,” if we must) has gone and outdone the erstwhile “King of Pop” (and King of Parading Pedophilia in Plain Sight). Hell, he’s even outdone himself after shamelessly sporting a Make America Great Again hat and having a filmed “powwow” (read: total circle jerk) with Donald Trump in 2018. This after voicing consistent support for the man who has long flaunted his bigoted, white supremacist tendencies. Regardless, Ye has frequently backed up the sentiment, “I do love Donald Trump” (who once called for a boycott of Ye after his illustrious “Taylorgate” incident at the ’09 VMAs).
Nonetheless, Black people with conservative leanings (formerly limited solely to Clarence Thomas and Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), including Candace Owens, who joined Ye gleefully in wearing a White Lives Matter shirt, seem to relish repositioning their skewed perspective on essentially “loving thy enemy” as part of combating white people’s bid to pigeonhole them into being a “certain way.” As Ye once put it, “The liberal will try to control the Black person through the concept of racism because they know that we’re very proud, emotional people.” That is to say, in the eyes of the whites, Black people are (and “should be”) Democrat-voting, rap-listening and all-around “loud” and “outspoken”—the latter stereotypes of which Ye certainly embodies (despite desperately needing to shut his mouth).
Ye and Owens have both declared much the same of a “white liberal conspiracy” in different forms. That “being liberal” is one of the many traps set for Black people to lock them into being exactly what white society has laid out for them. In some sense, then, Ye and Owens seem to be announcing, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” (the same way Rihanna backpedaling on her initial refusal to participate in the Halftime Show of a racist organization appears to be saying, “If you can’t make ‘em anti-racist, join ‘em”).
Maybe Ye even wants to feign that he’s “reappropriating” the overt hate slogan in the same fashion as Black people decided to do with the n-word long ago. But no, there’s really no mode in which this aphorism (staunchly appropriated by white people) can be “reinterpreted.” Cropping up in the wake of the first round of Black Lives Matter protests that followed the killing of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, the “repurposed-for-whites” saying quickly mutated into “All Lives Matter,” along with law enforcement officials trying to claim additionally that “Blue Lives Matter” (though honestly, that might actually have been less scandalous than Ye opting for the “White Lives Matter” mantra). This becoming even more controversial and grotesque in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
To add to the button-pushing nature of the “White Lives Matter” shirt Ye and Owens wore in tandem, an image of Pope John Paul II on the front features the words, “Seguiremos Tu Ejemplo” (“We Will Follow Your Example”). Whose? White supremacists? Conservative Catholics? Right-wing nuts who don’t “believe in” abortion or vaccination? The answer, like all things with Ye, is unclear. And yet, maybe it’s as simple as it comes across: Ye is an asshole, full-stop.
What’s more, in spite of the obvious intent and hard-on that Ye has for offending people for the sake of it, based on all that he has shown and told us about himself, it can’t really be any surprise that “White Lives Matter” was the next step in the shock value “blueprint,” one that appears to be designed for the lone purpose of assuring his self-destruction. Or perhaps for him to determine, once and for all, that he is “cancel-proof” (in large part, thanks to being rich). Clearly, he must be, along with his nefarious soul mate, Kim K. The latter of whom has a long-standing fetish for Black men that seems to presently be rendered null with Ye continuously unveiling his love of all things white supremacist the more time wears on.
The presumed “pièce de résistance” being the donning of this “White Lives Matter” shirt at the Yeezy Season 9 show for Paris Fashion Week. Of course, one should also be prepared for the day when Ye decides to take it to the “next level” by donning a KKK hood (a.k.a. a capirote, the pointed hat used in Catholic ceremonies that anti-Catholic Klansmen somehow saw fit to take on as part of their own “uniform”). All in the name of a “fashion statement,” to be sure. But there is nothing “fashionable” about Ye’s overt abandonment of his own people. And sure, abandonment is one thing, but an outright attack on one’s race and sanction of white supremacy is, obviously, quite another.
Maybe, in a past life, Ye was one of the African slave traders who sold to the white Europeans of the 1600s. After all, he did once try to say that slavery was “a choice.” Could that perhaps be part of some deep-seated guilt his past-life self has? With Ye, anything anti-Black is possible.
The same goes for any celebrity who continues to enable his behavior by so freely associating with and supporting him (including Naomi Campbell, who walked the runway at the end of the slapdash show), billing his “antics” as “mad genius” in lieu of outright effrontery and total disrespect. And yes, it goes without saying that being a man has been Ye’s one saving grace for evading being put in the psych ward the way Britney “had to be” back in 2008. That, and he’s rich. Proving perhaps that “success at capitalism” is the only thing that makes Black people equal in the eyes of the “all-powerful” white man (something that occasional Ye nemesis Jay-Z would tend to agree with). The very being who cannot allow the phrase “Black Lives Matter” to stand without somehow, once again, making it all about white people (this being part of why the Anti-Defamation League considers “White Lives Matter” to fall under the category of hate speech).
For whatever reason, Ye can’t see that. Or, worse still, does see it and doesn’t care. Which is why many yearn for the “real” Ye, still somewhere deep down inside after the Kardashian Klan sent him to the sunken place, to one day pop out and scream, “Gotcha!” As though his entire persona of the past decade was an elaborate, Andy Kaufman-style prank.
