The Guardian: Do White People Deserve Kanye West?

In an article published by the Guardian, Judnick Mayard asked the question, do “white people deserved Kanye?” She was not pleased by the response.

The article, titled The Kanye West talk white people couldn’t handle, details Mayard talking to an audience about the oppression of African Americans and how white people do not like to face facts when it comes to race.

Mayard explains how she took the stage after drinking “for four hours” and then “dared to say too much.”

She writes that she spoke “about the appropriation of black music, the ownership of black bodies by paying white customers, the truth of classism as silent racism and the systemic racism that does not allow for black people to speak their truth without resistance, or to own the stories that they have written.”
Mayard said she spoke in a way to “make white people uncomfortable and to strip them of their entitlement to the most polarising figure of our time and I didn’t speak in terms of maybe, I spoke in the definitive.”

Despite the fact that Kanye West has famously said a number of racially charged things, Mayard also asserted that “rich black people are not allowed to talk back or speak about any issues within their social circles once they “level up” because they should be expressing gratitude for their inclusion. They should smile and be happy that they’re lucky enough to have money and rich white friends.”

Then, Mayard details, the white people in the audience started to leave. Not because they were bored, but, she writes, because they were “enraged” by the truth.

Kanye West is not a prize, Mayard continued: “Many white people, like those in that audience, believe that their interest in Kanye is enough to allow them to understand these problems, but he is not a trophy.”

The article concludes, “the truth will always be resisted. Kanye is resisted because his very existence speaks the truth that I discussed but just like my audience, when one has the option to disengage it is always easier to walk out. Whatever the reaction is for Kanye, you can trust that it will come as no surprise to him, just as it didn’t to me.”