I had the privilege to read Michael Eric Dyson’s book, What Truth Sounds Like over the summer of 2018. In it, he focalized the meeting between James Baldwin and a few of his friends with the 64th Attorney General of the United States, Robert (Bobby) Kennedy, in 1963. James Baldwin: a literary giant by any standard, a socio-political commentator, civil rights activist and witness, and a personal hero of mine, accepted an invitation from Bobby Kennedy, to have a sit-down conversation about the state of negro relations in the U.S. After ensuring that bringing a few of his friends was not out of place, he considered who would be effective in the discussion. After much thought, he decided to bring with him fellow artists, academics, and civil rights leaders with no actual affiliation to groups like the NAACP or the Nation of Islam: Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, Lorraine Hansberry, Jerome Smith, and Kenneth Clark. Along with his lawyer, secretary, his literary agent, his brother, and his brother’s girlfriend.
Bobby Kennedy thought that the meeting between him and Baldwin’s group would be showering him with praise, adulation, and gratitude for the position of tolerance and ‘forward thinking’ of him and his brother, John F. Kennedy regarding the negroes of this country. This delusion was met with nothing short of the unbridled fury of the African American diaspora starting with outrage from Jerome Smith, one of the Freedom Riders. Many left that meeting feeling it to be a waste of time, Kennedy included. After the dust settled and tempers cooled, what came out of that meeting, was President Kennedy’s Civil Rights Address which proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - something which Bobby Kennedy encouraged his brother to do. Despite that, its participants heralded the meeting as a complete failure, something positive did come out of it.
The meeting between President Donald J. Trump and Kanye West was was an absolute failure and nothing good will ever come of it.
I, like many others, participated in the collective facepalm as I witnessed the sickening display of Kanye West rambling from one topic to the next all the while spinelessly pandering to President Trump inside the oval office. When I first viewed the footage, I could only sit through 2:18 of it, before I turned it off and had to rewatch it in its entirety a bit later. If I had to try to describe what it looked like for a person to spiritually flay themselves for the appeasement of others, I’d use this meeting as an example of how to do so. It was as if I was watching a snuff film and the victim was Kanye’s soul. To his credit, I feel that my fellow Chicago native went to the oval office with good intentions, and he had a couple of things I could empathize with were they further thought out. But that’s as far as my grace and understanding of this particular antic is capable of going. Good intentions without knowledge are nothing more than wishful thinking. Say nothing to the notion that the road to hell is paved with ‘good intentions’. I realize that I am a week late in reporting on this story, but I needed time to fully process my feelings on the matter. I wanted to offer something a bit different to the conversation and unpack all the reasons why I felt this was a terrible thing.
First off, let me start by saying that I noticed that there were more cameras and more coverage of this meeting than there was with the meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin in Helsinki earlier this year. I can’t buy the excuse that maybe it’s because ‘Kanye said nice things about Trump’ and that’s why the coverage was so excessive, when, according to Trump, Putin does so as well. And yet the only people who know what went on and what was said in that meeting, are Trump, Putin, and their respective interpreters. That’s concerning to me and even more so that no one else seems to want to point that fact out either…at least not that I’ve seen. Secondly, I also noticed that one of the main reasons these two get along so well is because they are wired the same down to their speech pattern. Just like Trump can't stay on message without a teleprompter (who am I kidding; it’s difficult for him to stay on message with a teleprompter), it was just as difficult for Kanye to stay on message in that particular meeting. In the span of a little over 60 seconds, Kanye proceeded to discuss, albeit briefly, Prison reform, multiverse theory, welfare, and the overall state of Chi-raq in that order. I think that’s one of the bigger issues for me: I was hoping for the best and as stated before, I think he went with some good intentions and I watched with an open mind. Everything that he said was incoherent and sporadic and I went from being disgusted and enraged at the beginning of the video to embarrassed for Kanye by the end of it. As he had come to look like a hyperactive child hugging his estranged stepfather for the first time in years. Now, I know what it’s like to have grown without a consistent male presence in my life. It is difficult to find your way, and establish an identity with no example, no hint of what you should be, or the standard of man you are to measure yourself up to, so you tend to collect the example of your ideal man as you go through life. Picking and learning from your chosen mentors either dead or alive. Bruce Lee, James Avery/Uncle Phil, Carl Winslow, James Baldwin, Joe West, and Kevin Moore are some of mine just to name a few. The list of my chosen father figures is extensive, however, not having ‘male energy’ in the home is not a viable excuse for any actions of mine, positive or negative, that I’ve ever used nor even thought to use. Which is ultimately how I viewed that statement from him: as an excuse. I wasn’t sure if anger was the appropriate response to what I had witnessed or if I should feel a great deal of pity at that moment. And so, I’ve settled on a bit of both.
With the rise of social media, the internet has become a living, breathing, collective made up of millions of nihilists who are hypercritical of anything and everything. True to its nature, this situation is no exception. Almost immediately, the parallels were drawn from the movie Django: Unchained, where house slave, Stephen and his master Calvin Candie were compared to Kanye West and Donald Trump after this meeting had concluded. Stephen is so loyal to his master that he would endanger his fellow slave/fellow negro if it meant pleasing Calvin in any way. The loyal attack dog stays by his master's side even after death…even though he was enslaved his entire life by the very same man. It can be argued, however, there was a sort of genuine love there for Calvin or rather, something reminiscent of love, as I’m sure was the case even in actual slavery days. As we know better today about the human condition, we know that that kind of ‘love’ is a result of Stockholm Syndrome. I too saw traces of this attribute in Kanye’s actions in this meeting. Kanye spoke of mental slavery in his attempt at cleaning up his ‘slavery was a choice’ debacle at TMZ headquarters. Saying that being mentally enslaved was the choice he was referring to. One trait that I find most common amongst Trump supporters is their not-so-subtle art of projection: consciously or unconsciously transferring one’s issues or problems onto something or someone else. The other is walking back his previous statements. Here, the projection is unconscious, and the subject matter is mental slavery. His brain knows there is something wrong and tries to work itself out. This somehow causes Kanye to view himself as the victim when the world and those around him encourage him to further educate himself on certain issues before speaking on them. Kanye, chooses not to and follows his advice of “Follow your heart and stop following your mind because that’s how you get programmed…” philosophy from his SNL ranting. As a master of any craft will tell you, one must know how something is done - art, business, mathematics, music, filmmaking, politics, etc. - before breaking the established rules and doing it your way to set yourself apart from all the others.
During my schooling, I’ve learned that in your stories of fiction, you have to learn to like and relate to your antagonists. To antagonists, they are the protagonist or the hero of their story. It’s a concept I’ve been playing around with for a few weeks now. Because no one thinks that they are a villain in their story, but they may be the villain in someone else's. I think this is the case with Kanye West and to a similar extent, Donald Trump. In the 2016 chapter of America’s story, there is no doubt that Trump became the antagonist-in-chief for a lot of people, complete with his set mini-bosses as revealed in the Mueller investigation and collective resignations and firings. 2018 is just the year Kanye became another, pledging his allegiance under the guise of good intentions. From their perspective, they are doing the country and its citizens - whomever they choose to represent - a great service. Do not misunderstand: I am not defending anything either of them does or says. I’ve learned from the different kinds of media that I’ve consumed over the last year, that we all should listen to each other and try to relate to each other’s pain and point of view. Only then can forward progress be made. Though I agree with this sentiment, it is admittedly truly difficult for me to implement with certain groups, difficult for anyone. There’s a saying I like that goes: “There are three sides to every story: There’s one side, then the other, and then there’s the truth.” If both sides are telling their version of the truth, who then decides what is the ultimate, actual truth? And there, in a nutshell, lies my dilemma.
I have presented you with my thoughts on this matter as clearly and as articulately as I could. Through my musings, you can see that I struggle with the notion that Kanye believes that he is a hero in all this doing the good work, while I and so many others, believe him to be foolish. As with anything, it is a matter of perspective and history will eventually show which of us was right.
I cannot help this foreboding feeling of dread from the damage of delusion that he and Trump represent. A duo of perpetual ignorance and charisma, they spread falsified “facts” to the people who hold them in high esteem. These people, in turn, become extensions of this ignorance and act upon it. It’s a chain reaction that prevents forward momentum…but that’s from my perspective. I’ve recently become a fan of Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty, and I can’t help but wonder if all this MAGA support is the same for Kanye as Wubba Lubba Dub Dub, that is to say, ‘I am in great pain, please help me’.
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