When someone is famous, they should use their platform for good, to make change. Unfortunately, the one and only Kanye West is ignorantly using his platform to falsely accuse and objectify the black community.

West decided to give his opinion on the topic of slavery and claimed that black people chose to be slaves. That slavery was a “choice.” Which made him look even more unenlightened.  

“Like, you was there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all? It’s like we’re mentally in prison. I like the word ‘prison’ because slavery goes too direct to the idea of blacks. It’s like slavery, Holocaust. Holocaust, Jews. Slavery is blacks. So, prison is something that unites us as one race. Blacks and whites being one race. We’re the human race.”

This quote alone is a disappointment. West is not only a role model for millions of people, but the black community looks up to him for all that he has accomplished. Yet, he decided to say something that totally abandons factual reasoning.

Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, however with such a sensitive and detrimental topic, many thought should have been put into what West said, not just “slavery was a choice.”

I find it funny that Kanye is supposed to have an album coming out soon. It’s so coincidental that he is causing a media and political uproar right before the release. Obviously he wants attention, he always has. I mean the man who hates paparazzi, and wants to have as much privacy as a celebrity can have is the same man posting pictures of his home- which he has never done- and also doing a whole show with TMZ. This attention is benefitting him. Not to mention all of the text messages he has posted on twitter showing the criticisms other celebrities are giving him about the complete nonsense he has been saying and tweeting. I hope that people are smart enough to see through his tactics.

Kanye West’s platform deserves to be ripped from under his feet. It is distracting the public from the truth, it is influencing children on a subject that is already degraded and sagacious.

West continues to imply that people who agree with him are true “free thinkers”. However, there is a major difference between diversity and freedom of thought.  Diversity of thought being that our thinking has shaped our culture, which is partially true. The idea of freedom of thought stands for the freedom to have a certain viewpoint or opinion. In this Kanye West is presenting his freedom of thought. He is saying slavery was a choice, yet he gives no evidence or well thought out reasoning to support that we as people have been conditioned to believe that diversity of thought conditioned slavery to last.

Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but when such a prosperous black man with an enormous platform makes statements that slavery was a choice, it sends the wrong message.

Kanye West is most prominent when he is stirring up controversy. There is a certain importance for political diversity, yet relating figurative slaves with democratic voters and misinterpretation history is not the way to start the discussion.