From R Kelly, to DaBaby, to Kanye the responses are always the same from some folks: “oh you didn’t care when this Black artist was attacking Black people but now you care when he attacks whites/gays/non-Blacks?” I’ve always found this response to be odd. It’s Black people asking for other communities to hold our own accountable when we didn’t do it ourselves. We didn’t crackdown on Kanye then for denigrating Black folks though we should have. And honestly criticisms on Black Twitter don’t matter because Twitter doesn’t matter.
The actual contention with “you didn’t cancel him till only after he insulted non-Black people” comments is that other communities did what many Black folks especially cultural leaders did not and held Kanye accountable. If Kanye’s remarks about colorism and Black women were so offensive, he could’ve been dropped by the Black community, Black culture and commentators but he wasn’t. Other communities don’t tolerate degrading remarks, so we’re left gawking that Black men superstars can’t be freely homophobic, antisemitic or insensitive in the way they are to other Black people.
It’s not other communities’ job to police anti-Blackness and misogyny from Black men. Considering how much of popular Black media is already rampant with this stuff, logically other communities just assume “that’s how Blacks are” and gawk at us. How embarrassing would it be for white people or Asians or Jews to step in and tell Black people what they should be offended by....
darrellowens.substack.com
