America Has a Problem

Summary

Podcast Summary: Cannonball with Wesley Morris – "America Has a Problem"

Episode Date: December 6, 2022
Host: Wesley Morris
Guest Co-Host: Jenna Wortham
Produced by The New York Times

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Overview: Exploring the Cultural Reckoning with Kanye West (Ye)

In this deeply personal and culturally incisive episode, Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham dive into the reckoning many Black listeners—and general consumers of pop culture—are having with Kanye West ("Ye"). The hosts explore their own relationships with Kanye’s music and persona, tracking the artist's evolution from a creative disruptor and folk hero to a figure associated with harmful ideologies, misogyny, and antisemitism. The conversation grapples with questions of "divestment" from problematic artists, Black freedom and community, fame, and the endurance of collective wounds in the age of celebrity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Pain and Complexity of "Divesting" from Ye

• Processing the Loss: Both hosts express a sense of loss and deep discomfort with the need to disengage from Kanye as an artist, given his public and harmful actions.
  • "It's so huge that I have to be done...I, Wesley Morris, am done trying to make a kind of intellectual sense of the artist formerly known as Kanye West..." – Wesley Morris [01:56]
• The environment in the studio is somber, signaling a moment that feels like a cultural death rather than a celebration.

2. Kanye’s Early Legacy: Disruption, Sampling, Black Freedom

• 2004 and “The College Dropout”: The hosts recall when Kanye emerged by challenging both mainstream and Black cultural orthodoxies about success, education, and authenticity.
  • "Here was a person I had kind of been waiting for… this guy was iconoclastic in his insistence that there are rules that you don't have to follow to become a successful Black person." – Wesley Morris [05:09]
• Musical Innovation: Kanye’s artistry, especially his sampling and production work, is praised as "archive work," connecting past Black musical lineages to the present.
  • "Some people call that production, but I also call that archive work... It's a way of honoring your musical ancestors, giving them their flowers in real time." – Jenna Wortham [08:30]

3. Freedom, Imagination, and Black Artistic Expression

• Early Kanye is described as sounding and feeling “free,” giving hope of new ways to define Blackness outside the Cosby/Huxtable paradigm.
  • "He was the latest Black American artist to find a way to express in his own way what freedom could sound like." – Wesley Morris [10:43]
• But as fame increases, so does isolation and self-importance, shifting from “I’m carving my own path” to “you do not recognize me for how great I am.”

4. The Shift: Vulnerability to Rage, Fame, and Alienation

• The discussion chronicles the transition from vulnerable artistry ("808s & Heartbreak") to an egoistic phase (“I Am a God” era), to public meltdowns (2016’s Trump Tower visit).
  • "It was not the beginning; that was the culmination to me of an evolution towards something that felt unsavory and potentially dangerous." – Wesley Morris [16:10]
• Saint Pablo Tour as Metaphor: Jenna describes the concert’s visual metaphor for separation and isolation, with Kanye on a shrouded, floating stage above indistinguishable fans.
  • "It had very gothic elements to it... it just felt really clear that Kanye's self-rendering was completely transformed and that where he was, we weren't meant to access." – Jenna Wortham [18:41]

5. Discussing "Freedom" vs. Emancipation: What’s at Stake?

• The hosts examine Ye’s supposed pursuit of “freedom”—including aligning with Trump and wearing "White Lives Matter" shirts—against the actual limitations and responsibilities of Black freedom, referencing Renaldo Walcott's "The Long Emancipation" and the distinction between "emancipation" and real "freedom."
  • "I just have a really hard time believing that a true expression of freedom comes at the expense of other people's safety, other people's humanities, and other people's sense of dignity." – Jenna Wortham [20:04]

6. Misogyny, Misogynoir, and Community Responsibility

• The discussion recaps a "long culture of misogynoir" in Ye’s work and life, from "Gold Digger" to the public shaming of Amber Rose.
  • "He just painted her as this opportunistic, greedy little slut. And he had to take 30 showers after he broke up with her. And that was on the radio. And Everybody laughed. The culture was just like, yeah, who cares about her?" – Jenna Wortham [22:15]
• Both hosts implicate themselves and the broader Black community in allowing problematic behavior to go unchecked due to Kanye’s artistic "genius."
  • "We're talking about this cultural complacency and our role in helping create this social monster that we have today." – Jenna Wortham [22:34]

7. Parallels in Black History: The Limits of “Free Thinking”

• Wesley draws comparisons to George Schuyler and Clarence Thomas: Black intellectuals/artists whose contrarianism ultimately served systemic power rather than liberation.
  • "Does that mean that the rest of us are sheep and that these are the free thinkers? Or are they what, you know, classically gets called Uncle Tom's? Because all that alleged free thinking just winds up doing more harm to people." – Wesley Morris [26:32]

8. Imagination, Violence, and Artistic Stagnation

• Jenna references Robin D.G. Kelly's "Freedom Dreams" and the need for Black imagination to build something new, while criticizing Ye for turning toward violence and white supremacy—a sign of artistic and imaginative bankruptcy.
  • "To talk about violence... is so unimaginative and boring and completely uninteresting, in addition to it just being completely unacceptable. That's what discounts Kanye for me." – Jenna Wortham [28:01]
  • "As long as you're out there trying to align a White Lives Matter T shirt with an artistic practice, your art has run aground." – Wesley Morris [28:38]

9. The Effects of Fame: The New Racial Construct

• Fame is discussed as its own “race” or class—a state that erases responsibility, empathy, and connection.
  • "Maybe Kanye isn't Black. Maybe he's just famous in his mind." – Wesley Morris [31:13]

10. Self-Reflection and Moving Forward: Personal and Collective Accountability

• The conversation turns inward—how do cultural consumers and critics retool their attention, invest in new artists, and protect their sense of self?
  • "I am really trying to assess what in me let me overlook those things for so long, and how can I pay that attention forward? ...The only work I can do is really analyze my own priorities and interests and curiosities." – Jenna Wortham [32:03]
• Wesley movingly explains that his deepest fear was always that Blackness, immersed in white spaces, could become lost—a fear Kanye’s trajectory makes public.
  • "He's got stage four cancer of the thing that I am a hypochondriac about." – Wesley Morris [35:03]

11. The Walking Dead Analogy: Universality of Cultural Infection

• Jenna analogizes the spread of toxic ideologies to the "Walking Dead" virus—latent and potentially present in all of us, ready to be activated in the right (wrong) conditions.
  • "There could be something latent inside of all of us that turns us unrecognizable. And that also is related to white supremacy… what's between you and me and someone like Kanye is mental health issues, a lot of money, a lot of enabling and a lot of self-loathing and an economy that's not stopping you." – Jenna Wortham [36:29]

12. Choosing to Quarantine: The Only Freedom Left

• The enormity of Kanye’s spiral and lack of accountability leads to a conclusion that, as a culture, divestment and non-engagement may be the only options left.
  • "The only power that we have as a society is just to say, like, we do not tolerate this and we don't condone this. And that's where we're at with Kanye." – Jenna Wortham [38:49]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Ending the Relationship:

  • "We're in deeply vile territory, and I can't make intellectual sense of that." – Wesley Morris [01:56]

• On Artistic Freedoms:

  • "He was the latest Black American artist to find a way to express in his own way what freedom could sound like." – Wesley Morris [10:43]

• On the Cost of Fame:

  • "Maybe Kanye isn't Black. Maybe he's just famous in his mind." – Wesley Morris [31:13]

• On the Limits of Artistic Imagination:

  • "To talk about violence, whether it's against women you've dated, [or] people you feel you're in competition to, is so unimaginative and boring and completely uninteresting, in addition to it just being completely unacceptable." – Jenna Wortham [28:01]

• On Self-Reflection:

  • "I am really trying to assess what in me let me overlook those things for so long, and how can I pay that attention forward?" – Jenna Wortham [32:03]

• On Blackness in White Spaces:

  • "I've never, ever, ever felt in danger of losing my sense of who I am as a Black American person. But I've always worried and wondered simultaneously why. Why am I not making the same choices Kanye West made? He's got stage four cancer of the thing that I am a hypochondriac about." – Wesley Morris [35:03]

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Key Timestamps for Reference

• [01:56] – Wesley Morris: “I’m done trying to make sense of Kanye West.”
• [08:30] – Jenna Wortham: On Kanye’s sampling as “archive work.”
• [13:45] – Discussion of fame’s corrupting influence and Kanye’s "I Am A God" moment.
• [16:09] – The Trump Tower visit as a turning point.
• [18:19] – Jenna describes the Kanye Saint Pablo concert as visually isolating, with fans shrouded in darkness.
• [20:03] – Jenna explains the difference between "emancipation" and "freedom" (Renaldo Walcott).
• [22:32] – Jenna on cultural complacency with Kanye’s misogyny.
• [26:32] – Wesley connects Kanye’s journey to historical figures like George Schuyler and Clarence Thomas.
• [28:01] – Jenna on the limits of Ye’s imagination.
• [31:13] – Wesley’s “maybe Kanye isn’t Black, maybe he’s just famous.”
• [32:03] – Jenna on personal responsibility and changing attention.
• [35:03] – Wesley’s reflection on his fear of losing Blackness.
• [36:29] – Jenna’s analogy to “The Walking Dead” and latent societal infection.
• [38:49] – Jenna on the need to culturally quarantine from Ye.

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Conclusion

The episode is a rare, vulnerable confrontation with both personal and communal grief over losing an artist who once represented hope, innovation, and Black freedom—now associated with harmful ideology and a loss of empathy. The reckoning is not only with Kanye West, but with the culture that allowed his harms to go unchecked for so long. The ultimate freedom, the hosts suggest, is in reclaiming attention, imagination, and a refusal to dignify destructiveness under the guise of genius or fame.

The dialogue is rich with cultural, political, and philosophical depth, challenging listeners to reflect on their own complicity, imagination, and roles as caretakers of the communities and cultures they cherish.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

I was at a party last month, and this song came on. She take my money and, you know, normally my first impulse with this song was to just get my eagle on, but I really did not understand how the DJ didn't get the memo.

[A]

Mm.

[B]

So I just stood there on the dance floor, not dancing.

[A]

What did you want to happen?

[B]

I just wanted to not have to think about him.

[A]

Right. You just wanted to enjoy the night.

[B]

Yeah, I just wanted to enjoy the night. This was me just, like, running out of Runway to let this person's ideology fly, if we can even call it an ideology. But mostly what I was feeling out there on the dance floor was just like another occasion for me to sit in my blackness and figure out what that is all about.

[A]

It's tough, right? It's really frustrating. And it's difficult to try to figure out our relationship to someone we don't even know, but whose work we've had a relationship to for decades. So. So thinking about divesting from that is.

[B]

It's painful.

[A]

It's not a small thing.

[B]

No, it's huge. And it's so huge that I have to be done. Now, when I say done, I don't mean I'm going to come after people who play the music in my presence. I just think that I, Wesley Morris, am done trying to make a kind of intellectual sense of the artist formerly known as Kanye west, who now goes by. Yeah, I just. It's. We're in deeply vile territory, and I can't make intellectual sense of that.

[A]

I'm where you're at. I'm past the point of sadness.

[B]

Yes, yes.

[A]

Into a place of rage, discomfort. And historically speaking, there has been a lot of grace for ye. Right. Probably more than he actually deserved. And I'm thinking about choosing to associate with Donald Trump and going to Trump Tower. You know, there has been mounting misogyny, mounting sexism that got overlooked. Right. Got a pass because the music was so good. Now we're reaching a point where all that's compounding. The list is very long. Includes the White Lives Matter shirt, Paris Fashion Week. This abhorrent interview he gives most recently on Alex Jones show. I'm not going to repeat what he said, because it's way too vile. There's no redemption. There's no accountability. Every single time this person is given a chance, including being allowed back on.

[B]

Twitter, they just double down.

[A]

You know, you and I have talked about Kanye many, many, many times over the course of this show. The last time we tried to untangle this topic together, we decided together we were not going to give up on Kanye, that we were invested in him and his project and his mission and curious about it. A day has arrived where how we feel is different.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So let's get into it. Let's talk about it. And also just notice how the atmosphere in this room has changed.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's always a party in this studio.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Today it's funereal. Let's talk about why. I'm Jay Wortham.

[B]

I'm Wesley Morris, and we're two cultural undertakers at the New York Times.

[A]

And this is still processing.

[B]

Can we go back to 2004?

[A]

Take me there.

[B]

2004, the college dropout comes out, and I was really feeling like here was a person I had kind of been waiting for.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

This guy was iconoclastic in his insistence that there are rules that you don't have to follow to become a successful black person.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

He drops out of college the year I graduate. And one of the things we get taught as a people is that one of the things that really helps us succeed is going to get a college degree. And there was something about its mocking insistence that it's the wrong way to go.

[A]

Huh, huh, huh.

[B]

There's a whole sketch. My dad died, and he left me his degrees. Where the narrator of this little interlude is basically talking about a story where his father collects degrees. Essentially, my mom would always say, dad.

[A]

Why don't you work?

[B]

But he just kept learning, you know, he wasn't a good father, as a result, had all these degrees. He was so greedy with degrees. He took my degree. But I just kind of sat there and was like, for a lot of us, this is a way out, getting a college education.

[A]

It feels important to note that at this exact same moment in time, another college dropout is releasing something that will also disrupt notions of productivity and genius and, oh, yeah, you know, introduce an entirely new paradigm, which is. Mark Zuckerberg, famous college dropout, launches the facebook.com and I just bring that up to say that album, for me, also challenged the idea that the other means of success was to somehow figure out how to be a really savvy college dropout who created a multimillion dollar app that then skyrockets you to stardom and success. Because that was the pressure for my generation at that time. Right? It was this idea of we are at the forefront of a brand new technological revolution and if you can't figure it out, you're going to be left behind. And Kanye, College Dropout just also offered a way to say unsubscribe. Maybe I don't want that either.

[B]

But the way I received aspects of the College Dropout album was that he was essentially challenging what I can only describe as like a black orthodoxy that points to middle class black success as looking a particular way. I didn't have a problem with that. That wasn't an or. It didn't feel like an orthodoxy to me. But the way that Kanye west was thinking about it, it was what I.

[A]

Found so moving about Kanye's alternativeness is that he was still a scholar. And instead of someone presenting papers or dissertations, what he was doing was he was presenting lineage through music, right through sampling. You know, part of Kanye's early success resides entirely in his uncanny and genius like ability to beat, match.

[B]

Welcome, ladies.

[A]

And gentlemen, and pull tiny snippets and choruses and parts of songs and step on them, screw them, smash them, so they sound completely different and also extremely familiar. And some people call that production, but I also call that archive work, because what you're doing is pulling from the past to make something new for the future. It's a way of honoring yourself. Musical lineage. It's a way of honoring your musical ancestors, giving them their flowers in real time. And a key example of that craftsmanship shines on All Falls down, which is pulled from Lauryn Hill's devastatingly iconic Unplugged 2002 MTV live performance. And she's really talking about the corrosiveness of fame, the music industry sexism. By the way, Kanye actually didn't get permission to use the original sample, but he ends up bringing a Chicago singer in, Selina Johnson, to sing the hooks that he uses. So it's an interpolation of Lauryn Hill's album, but that's a way of again, referencing an artist that at that time, a lot of people weren't thinking about. I'm also thinking of a song like heard him say, which includes this just incredibly delicate and lacy Piano work.

[B]

And I heard him say, nothing's ever promised. Tomorrow, today.

[A]

That's a sample from a Natalie Cole song. His work with sampling and production was really, really, really validating to think about musical artistry and deep archival knowledge as being just as important as anything else you might study in college.

[B]

And the music was fun. It was fun to listen to. And what was really exciting about that was that the art seemed free. The person who made the art seemed free. The sort of personal freedom to be whoever Kanye west the individual is. And if that happens to lead to thinking in a way that isn't like other black people, most black people, then so be it. He was the latest black American artist to find a way to express in his own way what freedom could sound like.

[A]

Listening to Kanye at least gave me hope that someone is thinking about another way. So to have someone like Kanye come out very boldly and exuberantly and to say, I'm creating my own politic, it has nothing to do with what the Huxtables were up to, because that's what we're really also talking about here right now, which is a black paradigm that had been set up and created by the Huxtables. And here's someone else saying, I don't know. I think there's another way.

[B]

Those are my people down there. So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help with. This is also the period where he goes on that Hurricane Katrina telethon. There's now over 25ft of water where there was once city streets, and stands next to Mike Myers and says, george Bush doesn't care about black people. He looked terrified when he did it. And that moment made him a folk hero, essentially. He was expressing feelings that a lot of black people in this country felt about the president at that time. And after these first three albums, the next three 808s and Heartbreak and my Beautiful Dark, Twisted Fantasy and Yeezus have some of that vulnerability to me, like he is. He's risking something here in terms of how big he wants to make, his ego, how small he wants to make it. I think those are three albums that are about a person wrestling with something else. There is during this, what I would describe as a vulnerability period. This turned into darkness, into grimness. And the whole time, one of the thrills of these albums is that as a listener, you're kind of like your hand is near the panic button even as the music is kind of blowing your mind.

[A]

It seemed like for Kanye during this time, that as he became more successful the initial disruption that he created. Right. And the freedom that that allowed him perhaps was starting to trap him. Right. I'm thinking really specifically about that 2013 Zane Lowe interview.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

Where he's asked about the song on Yeezus titled I Am a God. It's a very fast paced, aggressive song that just felt like an exorcism of some kind. And I honestly didn't really grapple with the lyrics too much. And then you have him in this interview where he's like, everybody says, who.

[B]

Does he think he is? I just told you who I thought.

[A]

I was a God. And that part of the interview is always excerpted as an example of this turn you're describing, where we're seeing an artist who's wrestling with inner demons that aren't yet fully outside of themselves in a way. Like, it's very internal conflict. But that interview goes on, and what he says next is so illuminating. He's like, would it been better if.

[B]

I had a song that said I'm a gangster? Or if I had a song that said I am a pimp?

[A]

Because society is a lot more comfortable with me describing myself in those terms. But when I say I'm a God, that's when people have a problem. But there is this sense of someone who feels like they're not being recognized for how great they are. And that's a really different approach than early Kanye, which is talking about, I don't care what you think about me. I'm going to carve a new path. I'm a blaze a new way. Follow me if you want, whatever. And this Kanye is saying, you do not recognize me for how great I am. And there's a marked difference there.

[B]

Yeah. And he goes on tour, the Life of Pablo tour. It's 2016, and he's giving these erratic speeches from the stage, and there's a horrible assault, robbery, incident involving Kim Kardashian. And during the tour, he is hospitalized with exhaustion. And the first thing that he does when he gets out of the hospital is go to Trump Tower.

[A]

Tanya, what are you guys gonna do?

[B]

And it wasn't just that he goes to Trump Tower a month after the election, he goes blonde, a hair color that basically matches Donald Trump's. Just friends. Just friends. And he's a good man. And the press is trying to ask ye questions, and he doesn't answer. Ye just stands there.

[A]

Nothing to say.

[B]

I just wanted to take a picture right now. And that was the beginning of some kind of change. Like, I mean, it was not the Beginning that was the culmination to me of an evolution towards something that felt unsavory and potentially dangerous.

[A]

All the things you're describing, Wesley, is actually why I decided to go see Saint Pablo. Right. The tour for the Life of Pablo, because that album was so confounding to me. Right. You have a song like Ultralight Beam, which is kind of about redemption. You've got Kirk Franklin, Father there's prayers.

[B]

For everyone that feels they're not good enough.

[A]

The expert on black redemption in our community and gospel singing this song with chance about new beginnings and hope and optimism.

[B]

We on an ultralight beam we on an ultra light beam this is a God dream.

[A]

And that song goes right into Father Stretch My Hands part one. And then he starts talking about which I don't have moral judgment around. But in the context of the. The key changes of this song is really befuddling. So with all this in mind, me and Good Faith get a ticket, go to Saint Pablo concert. I think I went by myself and I was struck by a few things. One, the entire concert pretty much was attended by white people. There was something interesting there, the stage mechanics of that performance. Kanye was suspended on a platform that was shrouded in light. So much so that you couldn't see the audience. Like, I mean, this is always true of a concert, right? The performer is highlighted, but usually there are these roving spotlights on the crowd, so you can see everyone else in their state of ecstasy, and you're getting giddy off of their giddiness. And with Kanye, there really wasn't any interest in being able to see the audience. All eyes were on Kanye and the platform was careening around the arena.

[B]

Yeah, it was cantilevered, and so the.

[A]

People below it were shrouded in darkness. So you could only just see this teeming mass of Kanye's acolytes essentially reaching their hands up. I mean, it looked like a Caravaggio painting or something. It had very gothic elements to it.

[B]

I'd say. Bosh Hieronymous Bosch.

[A]

It just felt really clear that Kanye's self rendering was completely transformed and that where he was, we weren't meant to access.

[B]

One of the things that you and I have been thinking about together in our work separately is what does ultimate absolute freedom for black people in this country look like? One of the things it seemed like ye was trying to show us was maybe it does look like voting for Republicans. If you are conservative, you should be free enough to do that. Why shouldn't you be able to go on Twitter and with a maga hat on. And, well, I don't see why shouldn't I be able to do this? Because I'm me. I'm not representing black people. I'm representing me. Yay.

[A]

Okay. But. Well, I don't think that's freedom. It's not an expansive idea. It's not an idea that's actually imagining something new. And I'm drawing a lot of my thinking from a book that has really been moving me in my own research for my projects called the Long Emancipation by Renaldo Walcott, which is trying to help us distinguish between ideas of emancipation and freedom.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

His point is that emancipation served as a way to think about, not slavery, but it wasn't freedom. Right. Because the newly emancipated black people in this country still had a ton. I mean, we still do, but there's a. There was a ton of socio political restrictions and limitations on what kind of jobs you could have, where you could live. Policing on your hair, policing on your body. I mean, we have an approximation of freedom, but because we're still in this post slavery economy, it's really hard to know what it would actually mean to be free. And so the book is asking us to think about being in a long period of emancipation rather than ever having approached freedom. I want that freedom for all of us. I just have a really hard time believing that a true expression of freedom comes at the expense of other people's safety, other people's humanities, and other people's sense of dignity.

[B]

Well, that's the point at which his going to Paris during Paris Fashion Week and wearing the T shirt that says white lives matter comes in. Right. Not just that. All lives matter. That would have been bad enough. But keywords, sure. They said white lives matter. Talking about, like, I'm going to go death con three. Death con three. D, E, A T, H, Con three on Jewish people. For me, that was the moment where, I mean, all the wheels fall off.

[A]

The wheels had been fallen off the bus for a minute though, right?

[B]

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[A]

It's important to remember that Kanye has been practicing misogynoir for a really long time. Songs like Gold Digger, Right. Even songs like Flashing Lights. You know, there's always this narrative that just paints him as a victim to greedy black women. And the entire narrative around Amber Rose.

[B]

Oh, Lord.

[A]

In the aftermath of their relationship, he just painted her as this opportunistic, greedy little slut. And he had to take 30 showers after he broke up with her. And that was on the radio. And Everybody laughed. The culture was just like, yeah, who cares about her?

[B]

I'm probably as guilty as anybody.

[A]

We all are. I mean, we're talking about this cultural complacency and our role in helping create this social monster that we have today. So there had already been a lot of corrosive behavior towards a lot of vulnerable people before all of this blew up in the last handful of months.

[B]

Well, I mean, I think we should take a break and when we come back, we should talk about exactly how blown up things are. Because whatever seemed free about this person is actually the opposite. It's your headline to unpack.

[A]

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[B]

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[B]

It's your day to know what else you need to know today. The New York Times. It's your world to understand. Find out [e-mail] yourworld.

[A]

It'S hard to really talk about where I think Kanye's at and what I think is going on with him. Because the truth is, I don't know. I'm not inside that man's brain. I'm not inside anybody's head but my own.

[B]

What's coming up for me in all of this is that this is not the first time we have been here as a people. Other people have made this choice to try to challenge what we initially were calling an orthodoxy. Right. But what it really is is our sense of community. One of the earliest people who comes to mind is a guy named George Schuyler. Wrote one of my favorite books is called Black no More Book that came out in 1931. And it's basically about a scientist who creates a way for black people to become white. And the main character undergoes this procedure, turns from a black person to a white person and becomes a big wig in a white supremacist organization. That's kind of like the KKK marries the daughter of the head Klansman who is trying to stop this race changing procedure from making things worse for white people.

[A]

How does the technology impact your DNA?

[B]

Well, funny you should ask because whenever in this novel a black person who's turned white reproduces with their new white spouse, they produce a black baby.

[A]

Right? Right. That was my question.

[B]

The DNA don't lie. And that's the point of the satire. Right? But at some point, everybody's confused about everything in this book, including, I would say, George Schuyler, okay. Who, in the years after its publication, becomes increasingly conservative and increasingly anti black. You know, he releases statements like condemning Martin Luther King as being nothing more than a huckster. And then let's just fast forward to Clarence Thomas, who begins his intellectual life as a black nationalist and winds up on the Supreme Court as what, as far as I can see, is its most conservative member. And he's been on the court longer than anybody at this point. And essentially his jurisprudence amounts to casting a vote against every piece of civil rights legislation that comes to the court. Racial equity, racial fairness, racial justice. And the reason to bring George Schuyler and Clarence Thomas into our conversation about Kanye westjay is just to how can they express their own beliefs as individual Americans? And what happens when those beliefs don't necessarily correspond with the majority of black Americans? Does that mean that the rest of us are sheep and that these are the free thinkers? Or are they what, you know, classically gets called Uncle Tom's? Because all that alleged free thinking just winds up doing more harm to people. Black people, Jews. I mean, all people.

[A]

We've been talking about this in terms of freedom, but I wonder if it's a question of their imaginations. Right? Like, the imagination is so limited. I mean, I've been thinking so much in our conversation about Robin G. Kelly's book Freedom Dreams, where he tries to go back and chronicle what black activists have been doing to try to imagine their ways out of the constraints that we're in. Right. That we're trying to go someplace we've never been before, and new tools and tactics are required.

[B]

Yes, yes.

[A]

That true liberation really does involve the imagination, because we can't see what we don't know yet. And I think that's why I keep coming back to this idea of how limited this imagination is to talk about violence, whether it's against women you've dated, you know, people you feel you're in competition to, is so unimaginative and boring and completely uninteresting, in addition to it just being completely unacceptable. That's what discounts Kanye for me.

[B]

The problem is the closer it got to white supremacy, the less interesting the art became. As long as you're out there trying to align a White Lives Matter T shirt with an artistic practice, your art is run aground. Your art has run out of anything interesting or new to say.

[A]

Right. The turning point for me around Kanye, though, was him lashing out at the.

[B]

Vogue editor at around the same time.

[A]

Around the same time, when the White.

[B]

Lives Matter shirts happen.

[A]

I was watching it unfold on Instagram Stories. So I was watching, along with Vogue contributing editor Gabriella Karifa Johnson, who was at that show in October. And, you know, she said, to promote these ideas and white supremacist ideology on a fashion show and loop in black people to also promote it, she's saying, is a very scary and dangerous and violent thing. She was just like, this isn't art. This isn't good art. And Kanye immediately singled her out. He posted a picture of her. He mocked her clothes. He mocked her shoes. I mean, this is someone who has millions and millions of people following him. And to direct the fire hose of that attention at this black woman is a very scary and unsettling thing to do. And immediately, so many people jump to her defense. People are posting, talking about her right to express her critique and criticism as a Vogue editor at Fashion Week. That's literally what they're sent there to do. And what ends up happening is a meeting between all of them is arranged. And then Kanye tweets out like, we're good now. This is my sister. Yeah, it's just chaos.

[B]

I think what we're. I mean, I think the other. Other thing we're talking about is this other race of people, what they're called. Famous people.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Fame is a race.

[A]

Yeah, it is.

[B]

It's just. I mean, if. If. If black, white, you know, those are all constructs.

[A]

This one is, too.

[B]

So is fame. And at some point, I think famous people really think that their fame and power, intelligence.

[A]

You're talking about money. Like, money is the thing that undergirds all this too.

[B]

Yes. And I think all those things entitle people to say and do whatever it is they want. Maybe Kanye isn't black. Maybe he's just famous in his mind.

[A]

What do you mean by that?

[B]

I mean that the story that it would seem that he can tell himself is that it's the George Schuyler story. It's the Black no More Story. I have moved over to this other side, and I think it's pretty great. Look at me. I just put a bunch of people in White Lives Matter T shirts and sent them out at a fashion show. I mean, what black person would think to do that? Me.

[A]

You and I arrived in strangely different places. Like, the way I'm orienting myself right now is I'm trying to ask of myself different questions as a consumer, as a cultural critic, as a thinker. Like, I am really trying to assess what in me Let me overlook those things for so long, and how can I pay that attention forward? Who are some of the artists, creators, thinkers, producers right now who deserve some of that energy? Right. I'm thinking about tems, fnf. I'm thinking of a ton of incredibly talented black women artists who are coming up right now who. Who are geniuses. And I'm just trying to do my own reparative work and understand how I can do better differently, right? Because I recognize that I'm part of the economy that gave Kanye permission for so long. Because I'm not gonna be able to change Kanye. I can't ask him to show up differently. I can't even. You know, the only work I can do is really analyze my own priorities and interests and curiosities.

[B]

I think the thing that has brought us together to talk about this is not that it is happening or that it is news. Hmm.

[A]

Mm.

[B]

I think the reason that for many of us, the problem presented by this person is personal. I mean, it's individually personal. Right? Like, the thing about College Dropout that so bothered me was that I received it as an indictment, not actually of getting an education. I received it as an indictment of getting an education with white people. He doesn't say any of that on the album. But I went to Yale. The numbers just made it so that most of my friends were white. And one of the things that we black people talked about a lot was what it's gonna mean to then have these relationships, these close friendships with white people. The fear I felt was that I would get to this school and get this education, but that it was gonna cost me something, and the price was going to be my blackness. Even though I live a life among white people, there are white people in my life. There have been white people in my bed. I've never, ever, ever felt in danger of losing my sense of who I am as a black American person. But I've always worried and wondered simultaneously why. Why am I not making the same choices Kanye west made? He's got stage four cancer of the thing that I am a hypochondriac about.

[A]

You know what I'm thinking of right now? You know, in the Walking Dead, when they go to the cdc, this is, like, pretty early on. It's probably season one.

[B]

I bear my soul, you pull out the Walking Dead.

[A]

Okay, but listen, hear me out. Hear me out. Hold on. Hear me out. Okay. Early on in AMC's the Walking Dead, someone gets the idea that we should go to the cdc, because that's where all the answers will be they make their way there and they realize that the virus that turns people into zombies after they've been killed is in all of them. That all of them are actually already infected. There is no the infected. It only activates after you're dead. And it's a heart crushing episode because you realize that the cure they'd been looking for doesn't really seem to exist. And everyone at any moment has the potential to become accountable, to turn on themselves really first and then everyone else around them. So I'm listening to you talk and I'm thinking about this way in which this fear that there could be something latent inside of all of us that turns us unrecognizable. And that also is related to white supremacy. You know, we all grow up in this world, you know, it's all in the water. And what's between you and me and someone like Kanye is mental health issues. Right. A lot of money, a lot of enabling and a lot of self loathing and an economy that's not stopping you. But yeah, the worry that somehow we'll lose track of ourselves, that's a real fear and it's not unfounded.

[B]

The fear that I have is what you so beautifully encapsulated as being a, like a latent possibility in all of us.

[A]

Mm.

[B]

It's so depressing and infuriating to watch it proliferate in somebody else.

[A]

I mean, we haven't even talked about really, the fact that Kanye west is not well and no one knows what to do about that unwellness. And it makes me think about Amy Winehouse. It makes me think about a certain era of Britney Spears, his life. When someone's spiral that feels like it's approaching a death spiral is just tabloid fodder. There's an attention economy, which is why people are talking about divesting from Kanye and, you know, just stopping paying attention. Stop paying attention.

[B]

But what I'm also hearing you say is that the real freedom in this scenario is our freedom to leave him out there.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, it's sad. It's really, really sad. And the only power that we have as a society is just to say, like, we do not tolerate this and we don't condone this. And that's where we're at with Kanye. But I do think that it's not about leaving Kanye. It's about leaving someone who is completely unwilling to be accountable for the harms they're causing. And that the only way to inoculate ourselves.

[B]

I was thinking about an infection from.

[A]

Its spreading is to quarantine ourselves.

[B]

It hurts.

[A]

It does.

[B]

That's our show.

[A]

Still Processing is produced by Elissa Dudley with Christina Jose and Hans Butte. We are edited by Sarah Saracen and Sasha Weiss.

[B]

The show is mixed by Marian Lozano and recorded by Maddie Masiello.

[A]

Digital production by Mahima Chablani.

[B]

Esla Attar is our photo editor.

[A]

Our theme music is by Kindness. It is called World Restart from the album Otherness.

[B]

And we are going to see y' all soon. Happy New Year, Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa.

[A]

Take care of yourselves and each other and we can't wait to be with you again.