Ye, Kelly, Cosby, and the Black American Psyche
"Nobody cancelled Ye when he said slavery was a choice!"
And who exactly is responsible for cancelling him? The companies on their own? The ghosts of Black slaves? White people?
If we really wanted Ye canceled in 2020, we were supposed to put pressure on companies to drop him. We didn’t do that. Not only did we not do that, many of us continue buying his products and listening to his music.
I’m not saying that we needed to have canceled Ye. What I am saying is that we pretend as though he’s being cancelled now because these multibillion dollar corporations have soft heart for Jews and hate Black people. Sorry, no. Corporations care about profit. If they see a threat to that profit, they act accordingly. We never posed a threat. Hell, many Black Americans still listen to R. Kelly today knowing about his pedophilia since the 90s. It’s hard to take someone seriously when they say they can’t stand someone when they still support the very person they claim they can’t stand.
Our Jewish brothers and sisters aren't letting up.
That's the difference.
Lots of people have been cancelled for saying anti-Black things.
Michael Richards (‘Kramer’ from the 90s sitcom Seinfeld) got cancelled after he, during his stand up comedy routine, called a Black heckler the N-word.
Roseanne got cancelled for calling Valerie Jarrett a monkey. She got kicked off her show AND THE SHOW WA CALLED ROSEANNE.
The reason Ye wasn't cancelled for saying things that rubbed many Black people the wrong way is because not all of us were on the same page about cancelling him. It's not that corporations care about Jews more than Blacks. They care about money and keeping their clientele. Remember, Adidas only dropped Ye after immense amounts of pressure. There were employees threatening to leave if Adidas didn’t do something. That doesn’t sound like a company that inherently cares about Jews, or any ethnic group. It sounds like a company that made a decision they felt would be better for their bottom line that what they were currently doing, which was nothing.
In my opinion, part of the reason for Ye not having been cancelled by us back in 2020 is because in the Black community, there are a few different emotions surrounding these types of issues, as well as schools of thoughts. Ironically, one of those schools of thoughts is what is informing many of the Black people defending Ye right now, though some of those same people attacked him 3 years ago.
The tension within our community is one that causes many of us to stick with our person no matter what, even if we see all of the evidence of their wrongdoing. Why? Because they’re Black, and we don’t want to give people outside of our community, particularly White people, the satisfaction of denigrating another Black man or woman.
It’s why we aren’t all on the same page about Bill Cosby. The Black community is split between people who have written him off, and people who believe his whole case is Emmett Till on steroids; a carefully crafted takedown campaign to destroy an innocent man. There is even a third group of people who believe Cosby did drug and rape several women, but still appreciate the work he did in our community and want their children to have the benefit of growing up with the Cosby Show. I guarantee you if Bill Cosby stood up and said some of the same Anti-Jewish things that Ye said, some in the Black community—including those who wrote him off—would come to his defense.
R. Kelly’s case is even more blatant, yet there are still so many of us who—knowing he is guilty of having sex with minors—will not only listen to his music, but fiercely defend him. This phenomenon was so prominent, at one point, comedy writer Aaron McGruder wrote an entire episode of the Boondocks about this particular topic. You can watch one of the crucial clips here.
Ye wasn’t cancelled in 2020 because Black people didn’t cancel him. We didn’t all come together and cancel him partly because there is still something in many of our psyche that cannot metaphorically lynch someone and do the work of many of our ancestors slave-masters and oppressors. Many of us are proud of Ye and his accomplishments, even if our pride is deep down; and we don’t want to see someone like him dismantled.
One of my very dear friends shared this with me one day. She shared this story as a Jew who can relate to me when it comes to this topic. A brief summary is that there was a Jewish business man who would rip off his clientele and steal their money. After a while, he gained a reputation in a certain community for being shady, so he would go to another area and do the same thing. As infuriated as his clientele was, as far as they knew, his clientele were solely Jewish. This fact relieved the disgruntled customers, because to them, “thank G-d he’s only screwing over other Jews.” As much as they hated this shady businessman, what they would hate even more is if he gave a bad name to Jews to everyone else. As much as they couldn’t stand him, they didn’t want to give fodder to people outside of their community to engage in Jew-hatred.
I believe this is part of where we are as a Black American community.
Again, I disagree that Ye needs to be canceled, and am generally against the toxic nature of cancel culture. And I don’t even believe it is inherently a bad thing that the Black thought is diverse and full of friction, as it has been this way for decades.
For instance (and this is a slight digression), not every Black person was for integration, for instance. Black people in the late 18000s would have heated debates about even this topic. The ones against integration would argue that ‘integration’ would mean the end of Black schools, Black teachers and staff, and that Black kids would have to attend the White schools. The ones for integration disagreed. The integrationists were right and then some, as some of the Black schools were performing miles higher than their counterpart White schools. Yet, when schools were integrated, it was still the higher performing Black schools that were forced to close down, and the Black teachers and principals that were fired.
The question we should be asking is not “why didn’t Ye get cancelled when he made us mad?” It should be “how can we come together for the betterment of our collective selves?” The answer is not some secret cabal or conspiracy. The answer will be found in our faith in G-d, commitment to our families, and to our communities.
Everything else is sinking sand.