Musician Kanye West is now synonymous with controversy. If you follow him on Twitter, you wouldn't have missed his never-ending stream of rants. The controversy saga took another leap when, on Tuesday, in an interview with entertainment site TMZ, he made a remark on slavery that took the internet by storm. He said: “When you hear about slavery for 400 years, that sounds like a choice. You was there for 400 years and it's all of y'all. It's like we're mentally in prison.” The rapper did not stop there as he said, "I like the word prison because slavery goes too direct to the idea of blacks. Slavery is to blacks as the Holocaust is to Jews. Prison is something that unites as one race the blacks and whites."
The interview took place in TMZ headquarters and Kanye West proceeded to address his thoughts to the entire office. He was pretty vocal about his opinion on slavery without once thinking of the consequences. But when he asked the office whether they thought he was a free thinker, one of the employees named Van Lathan slammed him. Lathan said, “Kanye West, you are entitled to your opinions. You are entitled to believe whatever you want, but there is fact and real life consequences behind everything that you just said.” He shut down Kanye West by saying that while he lived the privileged life of a “genius”, the rest of society dealt with the marginalisation caused by 400 years of slavery. He continued to express his disappointment in Kanye West’s ignorant remark on slavery being a choice for their people.
Although Kanye West apologized to Lathan, the damage was already done. He sparked outrage all over the place. Journalist Don Lemon and radio host Ebro Darde reacted saying that Kanye West doesn’t know history, nor does he read. On several occasion, Kanye West himself has said out loud that he experiences life rather than reading about it. Kanye’s point about slavery was not an act of free thought, but one caused by a lack of awareness and knowledge.
Kanye West later took to Twitter to clarify his statements. He tweeted on his slavery controversy, “the reason why I brought up the 400 years point is because we can't be mentally imprisoned for another 400 years. We need free thought now. Even the statement was an example of free thought. It was just an idea.” Among the series of Twitter rants on how media is restricting our thought, Kanye said, “to make myself clear. Of course, I know that slaves did not get shackled and put on a boat by free will. My point is for us to have stayed in that position even though the numbers were on our side means that we were mentally enslaved.”
The question is, does free thinking mean you can rule out a historical fact, just because one person thinks so? Kanye should really think before he talks.