Dear friends and freedom loving people throughout the world: It is high time to boycott all things Kayne West—music, clothing lines, etc. He just declared that African Americans had a choice to become slaves for centuries. He further claimed that the problem with Blacks during slavery was the quality of their minds. If slaves had not allowed their minds to be imprisoned, they would not have remained in slavery for hundreds of years. These claims are not only incorrect factually, they are despicable.
Young people please listen up. Do not buy West’s garbage by claiming, “Well he has a point.” He does not have point. He has demeaning lies that disrespect the struggles and courage of our slave forbearers whose mothers and fathers endured the horrible pain of babies ripped from their arms while sold into slavery never to be seen again. I ask you, what if you had been that baby or those parents. If you resisted you were beaten savagely and even put to death. CHOICE?
In the twenty-first century, we do not have the luxury to be ignorant, stupid, and grossly uninformed. Slaves resisted throughout their bondage. Kanye is too stupid to have read Herbert Aptheker’s book, ‘American Negro Slave Revolts’ where he documents hundreds of slave revolts where slaves sang “Oh freedom over me / And before I’d be a slave / I’d be buried in my grave / And go home to my Lord and be free.”
W. E. B. Du Bois has documented how slaves poured into the Civil War and by fighting bravely, liberated themselves. West’s ignorance insults the memory of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, John Brown, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey and millions of other who fought to overthrow slavery so that a fool, yes a fool, could one day be free and make music and become an ignorant multiple millionaire. Let us not trivialize West’s loaded words for they provide cover for today’s murder of the Trayvon Martins and Sandra Bland’s in this cold cruel nation.
It is West who had a choice. He chose to be ignorant and stupid and to castigate the memory and courage of people burdened by chains and the lash. They, and us, are the people Claude McKay had in mind when he took a defiant stand: “What though before us lies the open grave? Like men (women) we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!”
For our own dignity and self-respect, we must boycott Kanye West across the world. The voices of slaves who cried out for freedom demand nothing less.
Boycott Kanye West!