Kanye West has been catching major static for his comments on NBC’s Sept. 2 live concert benefiting the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Among West’s statements were such bold proclamations as, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” and “They’ve given them permission to go down and shoot us.”
Granted, neither of these statements seem very plausible, especially the absurd implication that the police, the Army, the National Guard or whoever is going to shoot anybody.
And the thought that the man elected to our nation’s highest office is actually racist to the point of being unconcerned that thousands of blacks are living in what is basically an open-air sewer is unlikely at best.
But if you look deeper into West’s comments you can see that his thoughts were somewhat muddled. It appears as though he had two separate lines of reasoning running parallel, yet tightly twisted around one another like a semantic double helix.
This was perhaps best illustrated when West spoke about the amount of time it took for help to reach the victims.
“With the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible,” West said.
And in that statement you get to see both elements side by side: “the poor” and “the black people,” almost as if West intended the juxtaposition for us to compare and contrast the two groups.
Of course, not all poor people are black, and not all black people are poor, but the terms are used in this instance as though they were synonyms. And that may have been the essence of what West was trying to say when he accused the president of not caring about black people.
With his statements, West may have touched on a much larger question about the very nature of racism in America. Are black people discriminated against simply because they’re black or because a higher percentage of black people are poor? Is “econocism” the word we should be using?
Perhaps what West meant was that this Republican president would have pushed for a faster relief effort had the victims been predominantly middle class, as opposed to being close to the poverty line. It’s a chilling proposition that our president could be so callous. But at the same time, I wonder how many of those newly homeless people voted for Bush in 2004; I think probably not many.
The Web site for the U.S. Census Bureau reports the percentage of blacks below the poverty line at 24.7, while only 10.8 percent of whites were below the poverty line. And a 14 percent difference is significant enough, but then you have to consider that there are only around 37.5 million blacks in America, as opposed to 236 million whites.
This may help to explain why being black has become somewhat synonymous with being poor, which may explain why West feels that Bush doesn’t care about black people.
It’s not that racism doesn’t still linger in America. If you live in the South, chances are you’ve already witnessed or experienced raw racism. This is the kind of discrimination that stems purely from color. And while it can provoke a visceral despair that leaves one wondering, “It can’t really still be like that, can it?”, this kind of racism is usually limited to name calling or the occasional fist fight.
But the next level of racism can be much more damaging. This is the kind of racism that assumes, for instance, that a black person won’t be able to perform the duties of a particular job because he or she probably grew up poor and, therefore, went to a poor school that supplied a sub-par education. Or a black person may be denied entry to a prestigious college because the assumption is that he grew up poor, which has made him lazy and dependent on handouts.
These instances illustrate how tightly woven race and economics have become in America. They are so seamless, in fact, that white people often hold these prejudices without even knowing it.
Kanye West was never really poor, as far as I know. And he’s definitely not now. But I’m sure he identifies with the people of Southern Louisiana and Mississippi because he’s experienced their struggle at times.
Was he right to say the things he said? Probably not. But I’d rather people speak their minds and be wrong in a time of crisis than hold their tongues and be correct. Maybe what West had to say will relieve some of the tension on people who feel similarly. Because it’s important to keep the lines of communication open and uncensored in order to find the best all-around solution.
So, whether or not you agree with Kanye, you’ve got to love it that somebody still speaks from his soul.