PURE IGNORANCE: KANYE WEST AND THE WHITE LIVES MATTER

PURE IGNORANCE: KANYE WEST AND THE WHITE LIVES MATTER

The latest episode that sees Kanye West as protagonist showing off a White Lives Matter t-shirt at Paris Fashion Week is now well known to many. It was no surprise to see Kanye acting ridiculous, nor the decision to pose next to Candace Owens; they are, in fact, both remembered as great ass kissers of Donald Trump and as individuals immersed in the delusion that in the United States of America, even today, systematic racism does not exist. It is, in fact, the latter who gave birth to the movement called Black Lives Matter, which claims the rights of black minorities and condemns the episodes, unfortunately very frequent, of abuse of power by the police. 

The BLM movement does not imply that the lives of people of other races and ethnicities have no value, but simply wants to draw attention to a plague that is depriving entire communities of the safety that every citizen should benefit from. It is not only the many deaths that cause anger, but also the ways in which people of different races are treated during simple routine checkups, distress calls, arrests and detention. Only a lunatic or a white supremacist would not be able to recognize the flaws in the system. 

For all these obvious reasons I find West's choice highly offensive, which, according to him, is just a game. I think it is very dangerous to joke about an issue that causes real victims, protects Caucasian agents from losing their job thanks to legal quibbles, and foments embarrassing and ignorant ideologies in the heads of those who are constantly looking for justifications to prove how righteous the white man is, and how the black man is the one and only cause of his condition. I am tired of arguing with certain illiterates who believe that the black slave trade was exclusively willed and perpetrated by the powerful natives of Africa, and that slavery has turned into a conscious "choice" after a certain period of time. 

Although it is true that Europeans bought prisoners of war and slaves from Arab merchants, these fools forget that it was often the white colonizers who forcibly kidnapped the natives from their land to work in the fields, in mines or as an "attraction" in zoos which were extremely popular in Europe and the United States until the thirties of the twentieth century. 

How can we believe that Kanye West speaks with knowledge of the facts and that he has the historical and social knowledge for certain arguments? Him, one of the very few African American billionaires perhaps unaware of the fact that, out of more than six hundred billionaires in the United States of America, fewer than ten are people of color; this is just over 1 per cent. 

Not to mention unemployment rates and income distribution among people of different races: the number of unemployed black people is double that of white Caucasians; 60 percent of the African-American population earns less than $50,000 a year, with an average income of $41,000 (a far cry from the $70,000 an average white family earns). Finally, how can we forget that statistically for the same crime an African American is punished with a 20 percent longer imprisonment than a white Caucasian? 

Ladies and gentlemen, with all these numbers in hand, do we seriously want to show off slogans that praise the value of white lives!? I think a lot of people need to take a long pause to reflect and, in some cases, disappear from the media spotlight.