“Just The Thought That Maybe It Could Be Better Than Where We At At This Time”

(source: biography)

Because I know the inevitability of this, I’ll get out ahead and say that I AM NOT – I repeat, I AM NOT – here to make excuses for or justify the actions of Kanye West.

Nor am I at all interested in that.

I know there will be those of you who’ll interpret this to mean that I’m co-signing every harmful thing Kanye has ever done and said regardless of what I say, and I can’t stop anyone from misinterpreting me

And I’m okay with that.

I just want to be on the record stating that I AM NOT – I repeat, I AM NOT – here to make excuses for or justify the actions of Kanye West.

I’m not really the type to be at all interested in celebrity worship. There’s nothing about being a celebrity that interests me. I keep up as best I can; however, mainly for purposes of cultural critique.

There have been a number of celebrities across my life that I’ve become enamored with – Aaliyah, Hayley Williams, Zendaya, Angel Haze, and Cole Sprouse are on that short list – and Kanye has always been one of them.

“Through the Wire” came into my life a few months before my 13th birthday, and even though I was in love with the song it made me curious about who Kanye West was. Not enough to do any obsessive, in-depth research into him. But enough to make me not write him off based off that one song.

Fast forward to the beginning of June 2005 shortly after “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” dropped, and I knew that Kanye West was gonna be giving me something in music that I wasn’t gonna be able to get from anyone else.

I listened to Late Registration religiously for a few months. I listen to this album with the same awe today as I did then. It’s political, it’s personal, and it’s funny (those skits are honestly god tier!). And it was on this album with the song “Bring Me Down (ft. Brandy)” that he told us who he is.

I didn’t think Graduation was as good as Late Registration, though.

Then 808s & Heartbreak came out a month before my 18th birthday, and it comforted through the beginnings of a tumultuous point in my life that shaped me into the person I am today. This was also the album where Kanye struggled to deal with what his life was now, especially after the death of his mother.

Finally, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy – arguably Kanye’s best album – came out, and the Kanye West everyone loved or hated had started to become someone completely different. And in a way, he ends the album letting us know something was up with “Lost In The The World (ft. Bon Iver)” and “Who Will Survive In America (ft. Gil Scott-Heron)” being the final two tracks, respectively.

And so began the Kanye’s decade’s long fall from grace.

(source: Genius)

Back in 2008, Kanye, Pharrell, and Lupe Fiasco teamed up as CRS (Child Rebel Soldier) and did a collab with Thom Yorke (Radiohead) in the form of “Us Placers” that talks about different levels of fame/stardom.

The above screenshot is the last two lines of Lupe’s verse (the first verse), and the (first) chorus of the song.

It’s always been something that stuck with me; however, it highlights something I’ve been thinking about a lot more over this past year after learning something important about myself, and what it means about why I’ve always found myself drawn to and unspokenly understood by Kanye West.

As we all know, since the death of Kanye’s mom, things haven’t been fine with him. And I don’t think people really considered the weight of it all for him considering his recording sessions that lead to MBDTF.

But we already had a narrative for Kanye West: an incredibly talented Black man, characterized as arrogant and intentionally antagonist. And people saw no reason to understand him another way. His actions justified the narrative, which all started when he stole Taylor Swift’s moment to say what a lot of people were thinking.

And it was this characterization that became the albatross around his neck during one of the most tumultuous times in his life that helped get us to where we are now.

During this same ten year timespan, I was also going through a incredibly self-destructive spiral of my own. I hadn’t suffered the loss of anyone close to me like Kanye did; however, the coping mechanisms I created to weather the bullying/abuse and general instability of my waking life (both are home and at school) started to falter. And down I slid, unintentionally hurting people close to me because I couldn’t contain all the anger and depression, all the sorrow and frustrating absence consuming me since I was 8 years old.

Then over the last year I learned three important things about me that, looking back on it all, made absolutely every bit of sense, but because of the issues inherent to psychological testing for “mental illnesses/disorders”, it took a lot longer to get the answers to questions that honestly would’ve helped a lot earlier in my life: being diagnosed as ADHD and bipolar, and self-diagnosing (after months of intensive research, and taking multiple different tests just to be sure) as autistic.

And it made me recall back in 2019 when Kanye admitted to being diagnosed as bipolar. Then I remembered how often I noted to myself that Kanye talks in a similar speech pattern nearly identical to mine. Then I remembered how much I admired that Kanye didn’t do things for popularity or attention, and was willing to risk his reputation for something he genuinely believed in (which, unfortunately, also included his supporter for Trump, that he thankfully realized was wrong). And I remembered all his public breakdowns and outbursts. And being enamored by the way his music reflected his intense passion for music.

And how we wanted to do so many different things, and often said things that, to him, made sense and wasn’t intnded to cause harm but still caused a lot of harm.

And how much he’s struggled recently with wanting to be heard and embraced and granted forgiveness by the people in the Black community who had abandoned him.

And then it made me ask myself something that probably a lot of people haven’t asked themselves in this entire scenario: does being rich allow Black neurodivergent people access to mental health professionals who actually know how to help Black neurodivergent people?

Given everything that’s gone on, I’d wager the answer is no (especially considering how invisible Black neurodivergent people are in general to Black people, and both psychiatry and psychology as institutions).

And it means something even worse about celebrity worship culture; the ableism and eugenics at the root of “mental illness/disorder” discourse and research; and role racism, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness plays in all of this – especially in light of the recent Britney Spears documentary, and the abuse that people endure from the public as the “price of fame.”

I remember growing up how much Michael Jackson’s mental distress was (and sometimes still is) used to make fun of him. Here was a man who had lived in the public eye since childhood, whose childhood was traumatic and abusive, who had the kind of celebrity status that no one has ever touched. And the level of homophobia he experienced, the child sexual abuse allegations, people making fun of the second-degree burns he suffered after a pyrotechnics accident, the cosmetic surgery he underwent, his vitiligo.

Fame was particularly unkind to Michael, and people just wrote him off as crazy with very little regard to the amount of trauma and abuse he was constantly enduring as not just a celebrity, not just a Black celebrity, but the most famous Black celebrities of our lifetime.

In a way, we honestly didn’t deserve Michael Jackson’s talent. He wanted to make music to help people, to change the world, to make people not feel whatever pain that he carried with him since childhood. And in return, the world destroyed him for it.

And then there’s Whitney Houston. One of the most iconic singers of all time (something that the people involved in the creating the Rolling Stones’ 100 Greatest Singers of All Time list don’t seem particularly interested in acknowledging; all of whom should be held accountable for the crimes against humanity they committed to do the ranking that they did). A woman who was so talented, the world paid her back with unrelenting abuse and everyone treated her as if we all were blameless in her accidental overdose.

Her relationship with Bobby Brown – the infidelity, the domestic violence, the drug abuse – was used for comedic purposes. From 1992 – 2006, Whitney was in an abusive relationship, even had a miscarriage, that people took pleasure in laughing at because never do we ever miss the opportunity to make run of drug users, especially when they’re Black, especially if they’re Black women. And to her credit, she handled it all incredibly well publicly.

But that’s also part of the issue with how Black celebrities are expected to publicly deal with mental health issues while the world is still abusing them for simply existing: they’re not allowed the space to look or act “crazy,” or else they’ll be given even less public sympathy than the little they’re already getting. So it makes sense when someone like Beyoncé is very in control with how she allows the public to consume and her and her family.

Because anything less than perfect, even though perfect is never enough, makes an enemy out of you. And it’s not something Black people, let alone Black celebrities, can ever truly afford.

So when we have Kanye West – who is not only just a Black celebrity, he’s also an incredibly talented and outspoken Black celebrity – in the public eye the way that he is, and how his reputation matters less than doing something he feels is right or worthwhile, we get a familiar narrative that has never ended well.

And considering what I know about being Black and neurodivergent without knowing what that means until after being alive for 29 years – the kind of internal suffering that causes, especially when you don’t feel like you have anything to really anchor you to this world, and all attempts you make to fill that void seem to end in destruction, and nothing you ever so can explain this part of you that you’re constantly aware exists but it also registers as distant and vague despite being the part of you that drives your entire existence – I can imagine what that would be like for someone who’s been dealing with that for 43 years or 50 years, especially if your talents make you so far removed from most people around you.

And all of this is happening in a society in a specific culture that’s hostile to Black people because it’s a day that ends in y, that’s hostile to disabled people, that has no concept of what Black neurodivergent people could even possible be like (nor does it really seem at all that interesting in filling in the gap s), whose mental health services were designed to help rationalize and normalize the oppression of both Black and disabled people, in culture that finds enjoyment in the self-destruction of the celebrities it creates because we’re the ones who make them all their money.

And it gets particularly hard to address this when it’s when it comes to Kanye West. Because he’s been a villain to the public for far, far too long. And he’s been basically branded as irredeemable because people expect him to fuck up again.

He hates Black people is the narrative, and there’s no coming back from that.

But I think that we should reconsider. And by “we,” I mean Black people. I’m not at all suggesting that we wipe his slate clean; however, I think we should really start to have honest conversations with ourselves about whether all the money Black celebrities have even gives them access to the kind of quality care actually needed to help neurotypical Black celebrities, let alone neurodivergent Black celebrities who are basically invisible until they’re seen as “mentally ill” and then abandoned publicly by people of their community, and treated like a leper because they haven’t “healed” while they’re still experiencing abuse and trauma.

Only in their deaths do we start to consider what the social cost is when you become a “mentally ill” Black celebrity whose incredibly public breakdowns are seen deserved, and we abandon them to their pain.

And as a neurodivergent Black person with no access to any mental health services because mental health care is built around criminalizing neurodivergent Black people, who would wager that the issue is likely the same for rich neurodivergent Black people, I don’t want to watch more neurodivergent Black celebrities who want to connect with people through their musical talents be eaten alive publicly for not being perfect enough as the world takes pleasure in or simply shrugs their shoulders as they’re puting them in their coffin.

If Black Mental Health Matters, I think we should reconsider our approach to what we think we don’t owe to Black celebrities with mental health issues who aren’t the perfect victims.

I’ll end this with a quote from Ayishat Akanbi:

We talk so much about mental health, and how important it is, and how we have to remember that mental health is just as important as physical health, and then to discard people at the first sign of something we dislike? The two don’t marry very well to me. We undermine how easy it is for us to become the people that we dislike. With a different circumstance, a different upbringing, a different culture, how I could easily become a lot of the things that I dislike or find harmful, and it’s because of my own propensity to become those things I’m hesitant about labeling things evil. I’m hesitant not because I don’t think people can be ill-intended, I think that would be naive, but I’m much more interested in the root causes as opposed to the symptoms. How do we get to this state where people think that, let’s say, sex is an entitlement for them? People abuse power because we attribute it so easily to people. We treat people with fame and money like they are inherently different. I listen to alot of music, I really love writers, but my interest in them doesn’t make them seem superior to me. It doesn’t negate the fact that they could be harmful people in their private life. If we stop treating talent like it’s synonymous with character, I think we will be a lot less disappointed in entertainers and some of our favorite people. If you have committed a crime, a violent crime, a sexual crime, you should pay those consequences. I know a lot of people don’t change, but I would never suggest that people can’t change. They often do. I have, many people I know have, and especially when you’re met with the toughest adversity I think that’s a great mirror for change. I would say that it’s easier to condemn people than ideas. Because if we were to condemn ideas we would see how those ideas have affected us at one point. We would see how those ideas are embedded in structures that we still defend. No one has a monopoly on toxic ideas. They kind of exist in all cultures. Changing your mind does confirm that you are still thinking. If you can look back on yourself two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, or maybe even a year, and slightly cringe, you know, without hating yourself, I think you are moving in the right direction. Part of the beauty of living is that we get to change our minds, update our beliefs, we challenge ourselves, confront ourselves, and hopefully that brings a further understanding of who we are, and who we are in relation to other people, and how we are similar. So I think we should all be a little more humble, and we should always remember that just because something is popular, doesn’t make it good. There’s a lot of things that are popular that are not good. There are a lot of things in history that have been popping that are not good. Sometimes popularity is just a measure of how much people aren’t thinking. If your advocacy or activism is motivated by the fear of being cancelled, then you will adopt the popular belief. Mob culture is very terrifying, but I think if you are committed to trying to make the world a better place, or your community a better place, your society, your culture, you have to be prepared to think for yourself. Even if we look into the lives of some of the most prolific activists and thinkers, you know, we’re going to find chaos, and that’s not necessarily because they’re hypocrites. I don’t think so at all. I think it’s because they’re human. So, mistakes are how we find ourselves. It’s how we learn, and I think there’s something on the Internet that encourages us to see the world as a fight between good and evil, and it’s not that. We’re a combination of it all. We should be a bit more forgiving on people’s mistakes. We have to make mistakes – life is trial and error.