Kanye and Reverse Racism

I’ve noticed something about the reactions and counter-reactions to Kanye West’s “I’mma lechu finish!” antic. Most people thought it was funny — or at least the resulting jokes that came from it, but more than a handful of people on Twitter had a more serious reaction, and in their frustration called him a nigger.

Threads like this one [link] arose, claiming that racism still runs deep in the white subconscious, and that the Twitter reaction was proof. I disagree — not that racism runs deep, but that this was a symptom of it.

I think the Twitter reaction had to do with two things: anger, and a blindness to the subtleties of language.

If West happened to have Down syndrome, they would have called him “retard”; if he were short they would have called him a “midget.” But that wouldn’t mean that these posters nursed a subconscious hatred of either group. When people are angry, they attack, and they attack using the most hurtful term.

One may counter, “But if  a person thinks that term is derogatory, when it’s just something black people call themselves, doesn’t it prove that they have a negative bias?” That’s where the subltety comes in. Words have histories, and this one, like “fag,” has been used by the majority as a purely hateful and controlling term.

When people know that a name has power to hurt, they use it, usually not realizing that they’ve just targeted a much larger group with the entire force of history.

The most interesting thing to me about the article referenced above was its claim that “racism has a sole, functional expression: White supremacy.” Perhaps that is the product of white-on-black racism, but what of the racist foundation of the article itself, which is a general indictment of all white people, based on the handful of white faces he picked out of a Twitter lineup?

My advice to the blogger was to practice the racial harmony he preaches, and then take a wider view of this issue, because it isn’t entirely logical to indict a majority race, just because they were the most numerous faces in an angry mob that chose the most hurtful term available, and used it carelessly.