Saturday, September 03, 2005

Of Course Kanye West is Wrong

George Bush doesn't hate black people. He hates poor people. It just so happens in this case, the poor people suffering are predominately black. Aw, fuck it, I don't even know if George Bush hates poor people. I will say this for him, though. He's got to be the most incredibly tone-deaf president we've had in my lifetime, if not in the history of American Presidents. Was there any more of a defining "let them eat cake" moment than seeing people, mostly black, still dying like dogs in the streets of New Orleans, hearing stories about children, mostly black, being raped, watching the National Guard slowly roll in to finally provide some help to people, mostly black, even now, knowing that under all that rubble, all that water, are thousands of dead bodies, many of them African American, and the President is talking about rebuilding Trent "I wish a segregationist had won the presidency 'cause things sure would have been different now" Lott's house so he can fucking sit on the porch?! Truly, America, how could you witness that and still not be dumbfounded? Sarcastro said it to be a jackass in one way and I'll say it to be a jackass another way. Race is the unspoken factor in this tragedy. Not just because of who the majority of the victims are, but because of our response to the crisis in New Orleans. People were all upset that the folks in New Orleans weren't properly behaving while suffering. Now they're all upset that Kanye West didn't properly behave during the telethon. Well, America, we don't get to dictate how black people feel about things. We don't get to control black people. We don't get to judge whether not they're sufficiently grateful for the pittance they have, sufficiently grateful for our whole nation's paltry response to a tragedy that has a significant black face. If you would withhold funds from any charity because some man, even some rich black man, had the courage to let down his guard, deviate from the "proper" script, and grieve right there all raw and unbecoming in front of the whole world--to say "even I'm a heartless bastard who went shopping while people were dying," to say "where the fuck was the president?" to get upset and angry and to stand there for one moment honest in front of the world--if you would not donate money because some fucker had the guts to say what he felt, even if you don't like it, then you are as tone-deaf about race as your President.

5 Comments:

Blogger bridgett said...

Kanye was also one of the only artists at the otherwise silly and bloated ONE fundraiser to speak up on the Bush administrations African foreign policy mismanagement. As one can tell from reading his interviews or listening to his music (to which he is relentlessly dedicated to perfecting and over which he exercises near-complete control in authorship and production) or watching him perform, he's a shrewd and passionate young man.

But was he wrong? When the National Guard is instructed to stop the evacuation of the Superdome so that 700 (mostly white) wealthy guests from the Hyatt (dry, clean, in reasonably good shape) can be evacuated before the (mostly black) luckless bastards still left in the contagion cage of a destroyed sports stadium, well...

I think the man had a point and used his superior access to the media to say what many of us think.

9/03/2005 08:59:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think that the whole way this New Orleans tragedy was mismanaged proves how inneffectual the Department of Homeland Security really is.

On McLaughlin Group, Elanor Clift complains that this proves we weren't ready for a manmade disaster. I couldn't agree more.

9/03/2005 11:37:00 AM  
Blogger Kat Coble said...

I think that the whole way this New Orleans tragedy was mismanaged proves how inneffectual the Department of Homeland Security really is.

Because it was of course the DHS that failed to enact the city's evacuation plans.

Ooops. No. Sorry. That was the mayor of New Orleans.

9/03/2005 03:39:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You rock. You truly rock.

9/04/2005 12:15:00 AM  
Blogger Ryan said...

Oh, B...

9/04/2005 12:25:00 AM  

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