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I've talked a bit about Kanye West in my LJ as an artist more than as a spokesman of any sort, but over the last few weeks, he's really made a stand for things he believes in. He's gone on MTV to speak out against homophobia in rap, and just last night he appeared on TV for a hurricane relief programme where he called the president to task for his lack of action in New Orleans. To wit he said:
“I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family and they say we are looting, you see a white family and they say they are looking for food. And, you know, its been five days because most of the people ARE black. And even for me to complain, I would be a hypocrite because I would turn away from the TV because it’s too hard to watch. I’ve even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I’m calling my business manager to see what is the biggest amount I can give. And just to imagine, if I was down there... those are my people down there.
If there is anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can to help the way America is set up... we help the poor, the black people, the less well off as slow as possible. Red Cross is doing as much as they can. We already realize a lot of the people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way. And now they’ve given them permission to go down and shoot us.”
[insert comments from the other person on stage with him. Kanye then went on to say the following before he was cut off by the network]
"George Bush doesn't care about black people."
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theantimodel has a feed for this here and I've posted this, not because I want to get into some big sociological discussion or some political crossfire where someone says Bush isn't a racist because he hired Condolezza Rice and Colin Powell.
That's not what this is about; this is a people thing. This is a thinking thing...
The Red Cross will take your money, but it won't take your blood if you're a sexually-active gay man...
The president won't meet with a mourning mother because it will interupt his holiday bike ride...
A lot of people think of rappers as boorish, chauvinistic thugs, but stereotyping just makes you as ignorant as the next man.
Regardless, of how you feel about rap or the Red Cross or anything else I've gone on about, I think you have to ask yourself, if this had happened somewhere else, wouldn't things be better by now?
I don't put the deplorable state of things in New Orleans down to a race thing, or a class thing, but I certainly think they play some part. I think if N.O. was any sort of industrial, profitable place, (read: peddling oil or populated by mini-Bushes) things would move a long a lot fucking faster. ETA: I stand corrected, N.O. was oil-profitable, and the US is now proper fucked.
The US can meddle in everyone else's affairs but can't take care of its issues at home? Why is that? I'm not proposing some sort of isolationist policy that cuts anyone off, but how dare the US tell anyone else how to run their lives when its not even paying attention to its own citizens? That's so blatantly hypocritical, and this glass house isn't well-built enough for all these stones.
“I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family and they say we are looting, you see a white family and they say they are looking for food. And, you know, its been five days because most of the people ARE black. And even for me to complain, I would be a hypocrite because I would turn away from the TV because it’s too hard to watch. I’ve even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I’m calling my business manager to see what is the biggest amount I can give. And just to imagine, if I was down there... those are my people down there.
If there is anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can to help the way America is set up... we help the poor, the black people, the less well off as slow as possible. Red Cross is doing as much as they can. We already realize a lot of the people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way. And now they’ve given them permission to go down and shoot us.”
[insert comments from the other person on stage with him. Kanye then went on to say the following before he was cut off by the network]
"George Bush doesn't care about black people."
theantimodel has a feed for this here and I've posted this, not because I want to get into some big sociological discussion or some political crossfire where someone says Bush isn't a racist because he hired Condolezza Rice and Colin Powell. That's not what this is about; this is a people thing. This is a thinking thing...
The Red Cross will take your money, but it won't take your blood if you're a sexually-active gay man...
The president won't meet with a mourning mother because it will interupt his holiday bike ride...
A lot of people think of rappers as boorish, chauvinistic thugs, but stereotyping just makes you as ignorant as the next man.
Regardless, of how you feel about rap or the Red Cross or anything else I've gone on about, I think you have to ask yourself, if this had happened somewhere else, wouldn't things be better by now?
I don't put the deplorable state of things in New Orleans down to a race thing, or a class thing, but I certainly think they play some part. I think if N.O. was any sort of industrial, profitable place, (read: peddling oil or populated by mini-Bushes) things would move a long a lot fucking faster. ETA: I stand corrected, N.O. was oil-profitable, and the US is now proper fucked.
The US can meddle in everyone else's affairs but can't take care of its issues at home? Why is that? I'm not proposing some sort of isolationist policy that cuts anyone off, but how dare the US tell anyone else how to run their lives when its not even paying attention to its own citizens? That's so blatantly hypocritical, and this glass house isn't well-built enough for all these stones.
