Kanye West Has a Point. He Just Sucks at Explaining Shit.

Kanye West set the internet on fire again today with his latest comments regarding slavery…

“When you hear about slavery for 400 years.  For 400 years?!  That sounds like a choice.” — Kanye West

Of course, black people all over social media are pissed off under the belief that Kanye West was disrespecting the atrocities of slavery by simply summing it up to be nothing more than a choice.  But, truth be told, he’s not wrong.  Slavery was a choice plain and simple.  I know it’s not what you want to believe, but it’s the truth.  And I’ll explain.

If Donald Trump went on national TV and declared that American slavery was back in full effect and that all black people are to be stripped of their possessions and forced to enter an internment camp to spend the remainder of our lives as slaves, how many black people in America would accept that?  Or would the overwhelming vast majority of black people fight back even if it meant potentially losing their lives?  The optimistic side of me would love to believe that ALL black people would fight back at all costs regardless of if it meant sacrificing their lives, but the reality is, I can’t say all because I’m quite sure more than a handful of dumb knee grows would voluntarily sign up for a life of enslavement.

So, if you as a black person in the year 2018 can make a choice as to whether or not you would accept a life of enslavement, then how come it’s so hard to believe that an actual slave could choose as to whether or not they would accept a life of enslavement?

“B-b-but…THEY WERE ALREADY ENSLAVED!”

Did their current status of being enslaved mean they still didn’t have a choice as to whether or not they wanted to accept it or not?  Nat Turner & Harriet Tubman were born into slavery, yet they made a conscious decision to pursue freedom even if it meant losing their lives.  We’ve all seen the tv series Roots right?  Kunta Kinte spent everyday of his life on that plantation rejecting the acceptance of living his life as a slave so much so that he plotted an escape every chance he got even with half a foot.

The problem that too many black people have is that black people honestly refuse to believe that black people actually do have a choice, even in the realm of slavery.  Another problem that black people have is thinking that every slave was of the Nat Turner & Harriet Tubman mentality.  The fact of the matter is, there were way more slaves who accepted a life of bondage as the natural order of life or just attempted to keep their heads down in order to spare their lives than there were of people trying to fight for freedom.  And this is proven by damn near every slave revolt being disrupted by ANOTHER SLAVE running to tell massa (your original coons).  In order to keep an entire group of people held in bondage for so damn long WOULD NOT be possible if the vast majority of the slaves weren’t complicit with their own enslavement.

“W-w-what do you mean complicit you coon ass nigga?!”

Like I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the vast majority of slaves were not of the Nat Turner & Harriet Tubman mentality.  Most slaves either attempted to just keep their heads down for the sake of saving their lives because of complete hopelessness or most gladly accepted slavery as the natural order of life (your Stephon from DJango types).  Do you honestly believe that an entire group of people could be held in bondage for so damn long if there were more Nat Turners & Harriet Tubmans than there were Stephons from Django?  Hell no.  It would be impossible to enslave people for 400 years if everybody had an undying spirit of constantly fighting the oppressors relentlessly even if it meant sacrificing their lives.  Thereby in order to achieve 400 years of slavery, that meant the vast majority had to make a choice to embrace it or just accept it.  Either way, if you weren’t actively fighting for freedom everyday of your life on that plantation, you were complicit consciously or unconsciously towards your own enslavement.  You were either constantly fighting for freedom or you accepted oppression.  That’s it.

So feel free to hate on Kanye West all you want for his new profound “freedom of thoughts”, but when it comes to this point, his articulation skills suck, but…he’s right.  There was a choice.  You either chose to fight for freedom with the risk of losing your life or you accepted a life of oppression whether voluntarily or by simply just keeping your head down hoping nobody notices you.

PS:  For the “What about the Holocaust?!” crowd…

The major difference between the Holocaust and American slavery was that the Holocaust was deliberately designed to exterminate an entire race of people off of the face of the planet.  That’s it.  The goal with American slavery wasn’t extermination.  The goal was to harvest a lifelong endless supply of forced labor.  Slaves were extremely valuable possessions back then in terms of purchase and in terms of profits made off slave labor.  Slave owners were not out all willy nilly killing slaves like the Nazis did onto the Jews because each slave had a monetary value affixed to their lives.  The Nazis simply wanted to eradicate the existence of all Jews period.

So in essence a Jew didn’t have a choice because they were forcibly being rounded up by the Nazis with the explicit purpose of killing them.  A slave had a choice in that slavery wasn’t designed to exterminate black people thereby giving a slave a choice in either accepting or rejecting a life of enslavement…even if the rejection meant facing death for the possibility of being free.

PPS:  The great Hotep by the name of Tariq Nasheed recently made a documentary titled 1804:  The Hidden History of Haiti which was a documentary talking about Haitian slaves CHOOSING not to be slaves anymore and successfully overthrowing their oppressors.  Just thought I’d throw that tidbit out there for you all.