The Politics of Remembering Slavery: Kanye West & Sargon of Akkad
19 May 2018 [link youtube]
Sargon of Akkad states that black people have a problem because the history of slavery is something that "they just can't shake off", but this is built on the implicit premise that "shaking off history" would be a good thing (and what this really means is living in willing ignorance and calling it "liberation" from the past).
Youtube Automatic Transcription
Kanye West made a series of incoherent
statements about race politics and slavery in the United States of America not the first time in his career and probably not the last time these comments in and of themselves would not be worthy of commentary or analysis on this channel however I'm making this video in response to a reinterpretation of those comments offered by Sargon of Akkad so he had to go give me the opioids and there was talks amongst my camp like yeah he's popping gays popping pills right so when he handed to me this to me said you know this is used to kill genius right so I didn't take it two days later I'm in a hospital I was taking two pills a day at that time when I left the hospital how many pills you think I was giving sargon of akkad I feel has taken this incoherent series of expostulations from Kanye and he has tried to towards them into a coherent thesis on race and the burden of history when you hear about slavery for 400 years for 400 years that's how like a choice like he was there for 400 years and as a Leo and as Candis owns repeatedly points out none of the people involved we're even living under Jim Crow so to continue to be talking about it now in 2018 so many years after it ended is indeed a choice but I think what he has to say to his audience is more misleading than it is false in that he only states his argument negatively without being honest though being forthright about what it would mean have stated positively and what the implications would be for black people white people Native Americans Jews Christians Germans poles really much of anyone if they were to take his stated philosophy to heart seriously so you know this is put forward in a way that may seem appealing may make sense as an isolated hollow type you say a unique single example but as soon as we state it positively and start to broaden out the implications it becomes clear that his argument is in fact pretty close to evil if anything on this earth can be called evil what do I mean well stated negatively Sargon of Akkad's argument is that black people such as Kanye West and his daughter should not feel beholden to the history of slavery they should not feel trapped with the legacy of real historical events some of them as long ago was 400 years some of them obviously more recent they should not feel trapped within an identity such as the black American identity the African American identity that they should not feel that there is a burden or set of expectations placed upon them because of the past struggle for civil rights the past struggle against slavery etc etc now when it is just stated negatively in this sense and again as isolated examples hollow type this may seem appealing to you this may seem like a very morally uplifting suggestion and he goes so far as to say again he's really reading him between the lines reading in between the lines and editing and reordering the totally incoherent statements made by Kanye West but he manages to pick out a fragment of Kanye saying that his own daughter is somehow made to feel bad by being told that she's black and up to a certain point in her childhood she didn't even know that she was black and he pulls out some sort of reflections on identity politics and the burden of history along these lines would the world be a better place if Native Americans were raised with no memory of the colonial history of North America this has been tried in Canada we actually have a long and terrible history of separating our indigenous people from their parents and raising them as quote/unquote orphans although they were not orphans their parents were entirely alive and healthy they're just stolen from their parents but being raised as orphans by white people to be integrated into white society and to basically erase the history memory and reality of colonialism what it means these people and it was a disaster now more broadly speaking this is a this is a rare example of us actually being put into practice in the world and being put into practice with with state fiat do you think today that if you go out and visit a native reservation indigenous people whether say the the Navajo Indian Indians the United States the Jib way who are both in Canada United States or say the the Cree or the Inuit do you really think it would be positive to preach the moral that sargon of akkad here is reconstructing from Kanye West's incoherent ramblings to preach to them that they shouldn't feel beholden to their history that they shouldn't feel that the history of the last 400 or shall we say five hundred years in any way to find their identity that they shouldn't feel a sense of shame guilt anger or or any other emotion that in fact all of this should be dropped do you think it would be a positive message to tell these people that they would be better off in a state of ignorance than in a state of knowledge about this history and now contrast that to the diametrically opposed positive position I'm using positive in a logical sense here just stating positively what the position is the diametrically opposed position that these people's lives would be improved enriched enhanced if they were to know more about their history now real knowledge of their history is going to reveal them all sorts of peculiar contradictions I mean it's going to reveal to them the fact that many Native Americans precisely the way they were colonized was not by being conquered but they were employed as mercenaries by European powers in Canada that's the largest part of how Canadians conquered this country was that the French and the English both employed indigenous peoples as mercenaries with the French fighting as to English and English fighting against the French and by the end of the process the mercenaries were in effect just as much conquered as the people who hadn't participated in post wars um there are you know bizarre and unexpected contradictory contradictions in understanding the rich complex reality of that that kind of political history and likewise if you really study the history of slavery the slavery particularly as it pertains to black people and white people in Europe Africa and North America you will find examples of black people selling white people as slaves you will find examples of black people selling other black people's slaves as black people who managed to get rich off of black slavery and so on there are such contradictions and this doesn't challenge or overturn the general significance of the thing but you can have a more profound insight into human nature a more meaningful understanding of the history how it shaped the current situation we're in real warnings with real meaning for that for the future itself and so on by studying this history and the contrast of this is and again I'm not actually saying that Sargon's position is nonsensical it makes sense it just happens to be evil it's morally wrong Sargon's position is that this kind historical knowledge is going to put you in a position of feeling shame of feeling guilt or of demanding that others feel guilt that it's going to have emotional consequences that are so negative that it would be better to feel a sense of Liberty and self empowerment through ignorance but I'm just living my life day by day doing what I feel and what the Spirit calls upon me to do because I was drugged the [ __ ] out bro I was drugged out we are drugged out we are following other people's opinions we are controlled by the media and today it all changes we need to be free thinkers then we need to know how to feel free people say feel free but we don't even know how to feel free or think free but the thing is I think what he's saying here is actually deeper than what it seems it's not just the choice to continually think and talk about slavery even though that really hasn't been something that has affected black communities for quite some time the problem is choosing to be a victim of it to be the victim of a past that you cannot seem to shrug off do you sincerely believe that Jews would be better off today if they had no memory of the Holocaust this is an example of an you know an historical event that casts a very long shadow over some people's lives some people do feel heat and rage you know remorse shame guilt there are all kinds of tremendously strong passions attached to the history of the Holocaust and they're they're not just strong feelings for Jews they're strong feelings for for the Polish for Christians from Germany for Russians I mean this is a you know an event that had a tremendous impact on almost the whole world would you extend this same moral position you take in relation to Kanye West and what he says about blackness in the American experience the african-american experience the legacy of slavery would you extend this to Jews or even just non Jews just say Christians who happen to be born and raised in Germany that they would be better living in ignorance to be in this sense liberated from the burden of history you know liberation is is easy to preach and tough to practice in in this case I think it's really important to point out that what he calls liberation would instead be living in ignorance and I I you know what I have met some people who really felt that way about history I have met some people who just feel that history is something that subtracts from the present instead of adding to it I had met some people who felt that they personally would better off or their friends and would have you be better off if they could just close the door and burn the books on that past experience and I think the counter posing argument to that is to say no it is what's called new era thinking saying the the lessons of the past don't apply to the present they don't apply to the future that there's nothing to be learned from that I think that is in fact tremendously dangerous and in terms of how it applies to current and ongoing political debates such as the status of Native Americans in in the United States of America African Americans the Cree the ajooba way the anyway I think that's not just a sort of fatuous and self-serving ignorance I think it's a form of ignorance that's both morally irresponsible and in its way dangerous George Bush doesn't care about black people I've ever seen
statements about race politics and slavery in the United States of America not the first time in his career and probably not the last time these comments in and of themselves would not be worthy of commentary or analysis on this channel however I'm making this video in response to a reinterpretation of those comments offered by Sargon of Akkad so he had to go give me the opioids and there was talks amongst my camp like yeah he's popping gays popping pills right so when he handed to me this to me said you know this is used to kill genius right so I didn't take it two days later I'm in a hospital I was taking two pills a day at that time when I left the hospital how many pills you think I was giving sargon of akkad I feel has taken this incoherent series of expostulations from Kanye and he has tried to towards them into a coherent thesis on race and the burden of history when you hear about slavery for 400 years for 400 years that's how like a choice like he was there for 400 years and as a Leo and as Candis owns repeatedly points out none of the people involved we're even living under Jim Crow so to continue to be talking about it now in 2018 so many years after it ended is indeed a choice but I think what he has to say to his audience is more misleading than it is false in that he only states his argument negatively without being honest though being forthright about what it would mean have stated positively and what the implications would be for black people white people Native Americans Jews Christians Germans poles really much of anyone if they were to take his stated philosophy to heart seriously so you know this is put forward in a way that may seem appealing may make sense as an isolated hollow type you say a unique single example but as soon as we state it positively and start to broaden out the implications it becomes clear that his argument is in fact pretty close to evil if anything on this earth can be called evil what do I mean well stated negatively Sargon of Akkad's argument is that black people such as Kanye West and his daughter should not feel beholden to the history of slavery they should not feel trapped with the legacy of real historical events some of them as long ago was 400 years some of them obviously more recent they should not feel trapped within an identity such as the black American identity the African American identity that they should not feel that there is a burden or set of expectations placed upon them because of the past struggle for civil rights the past struggle against slavery etc etc now when it is just stated negatively in this sense and again as isolated examples hollow type this may seem appealing to you this may seem like a very morally uplifting suggestion and he goes so far as to say again he's really reading him between the lines reading in between the lines and editing and reordering the totally incoherent statements made by Kanye West but he manages to pick out a fragment of Kanye saying that his own daughter is somehow made to feel bad by being told that she's black and up to a certain point in her childhood she didn't even know that she was black and he pulls out some sort of reflections on identity politics and the burden of history along these lines would the world be a better place if Native Americans were raised with no memory of the colonial history of North America this has been tried in Canada we actually have a long and terrible history of separating our indigenous people from their parents and raising them as quote/unquote orphans although they were not orphans their parents were entirely alive and healthy they're just stolen from their parents but being raised as orphans by white people to be integrated into white society and to basically erase the history memory and reality of colonialism what it means these people and it was a disaster now more broadly speaking this is a this is a rare example of us actually being put into practice in the world and being put into practice with with state fiat do you think today that if you go out and visit a native reservation indigenous people whether say the the Navajo Indian Indians the United States the Jib way who are both in Canada United States or say the the Cree or the Inuit do you really think it would be positive to preach the moral that sargon of akkad here is reconstructing from Kanye West's incoherent ramblings to preach to them that they shouldn't feel beholden to their history that they shouldn't feel that the history of the last 400 or shall we say five hundred years in any way to find their identity that they shouldn't feel a sense of shame guilt anger or or any other emotion that in fact all of this should be dropped do you think it would be a positive message to tell these people that they would be better off in a state of ignorance than in a state of knowledge about this history and now contrast that to the diametrically opposed positive position I'm using positive in a logical sense here just stating positively what the position is the diametrically opposed position that these people's lives would be improved enriched enhanced if they were to know more about their history now real knowledge of their history is going to reveal them all sorts of peculiar contradictions I mean it's going to reveal to them the fact that many Native Americans precisely the way they were colonized was not by being conquered but they were employed as mercenaries by European powers in Canada that's the largest part of how Canadians conquered this country was that the French and the English both employed indigenous peoples as mercenaries with the French fighting as to English and English fighting against the French and by the end of the process the mercenaries were in effect just as much conquered as the people who hadn't participated in post wars um there are you know bizarre and unexpected contradictory contradictions in understanding the rich complex reality of that that kind of political history and likewise if you really study the history of slavery the slavery particularly as it pertains to black people and white people in Europe Africa and North America you will find examples of black people selling white people as slaves you will find examples of black people selling other black people's slaves as black people who managed to get rich off of black slavery and so on there are such contradictions and this doesn't challenge or overturn the general significance of the thing but you can have a more profound insight into human nature a more meaningful understanding of the history how it shaped the current situation we're in real warnings with real meaning for that for the future itself and so on by studying this history and the contrast of this is and again I'm not actually saying that Sargon's position is nonsensical it makes sense it just happens to be evil it's morally wrong Sargon's position is that this kind historical knowledge is going to put you in a position of feeling shame of feeling guilt or of demanding that others feel guilt that it's going to have emotional consequences that are so negative that it would be better to feel a sense of Liberty and self empowerment through ignorance but I'm just living my life day by day doing what I feel and what the Spirit calls upon me to do because I was drugged the [ __ ] out bro I was drugged out we are drugged out we are following other people's opinions we are controlled by the media and today it all changes we need to be free thinkers then we need to know how to feel free people say feel free but we don't even know how to feel free or think free but the thing is I think what he's saying here is actually deeper than what it seems it's not just the choice to continually think and talk about slavery even though that really hasn't been something that has affected black communities for quite some time the problem is choosing to be a victim of it to be the victim of a past that you cannot seem to shrug off do you sincerely believe that Jews would be better off today if they had no memory of the Holocaust this is an example of an you know an historical event that casts a very long shadow over some people's lives some people do feel heat and rage you know remorse shame guilt there are all kinds of tremendously strong passions attached to the history of the Holocaust and they're they're not just strong feelings for Jews they're strong feelings for for the Polish for Christians from Germany for Russians I mean this is a you know an event that had a tremendous impact on almost the whole world would you extend this same moral position you take in relation to Kanye West and what he says about blackness in the American experience the african-american experience the legacy of slavery would you extend this to Jews or even just non Jews just say Christians who happen to be born and raised in Germany that they would be better living in ignorance to be in this sense liberated from the burden of history you know liberation is is easy to preach and tough to practice in in this case I think it's really important to point out that what he calls liberation would instead be living in ignorance and I I you know what I have met some people who really felt that way about history I have met some people who just feel that history is something that subtracts from the present instead of adding to it I had met some people who felt that they personally would better off or their friends and would have you be better off if they could just close the door and burn the books on that past experience and I think the counter posing argument to that is to say no it is what's called new era thinking saying the the lessons of the past don't apply to the present they don't apply to the future that there's nothing to be learned from that I think that is in fact tremendously dangerous and in terms of how it applies to current and ongoing political debates such as the status of Native Americans in in the United States of America African Americans the Cree the ajooba way the anyway I think that's not just a sort of fatuous and self-serving ignorance I think it's a form of ignorance that's both morally irresponsible and in its way dangerous George Bush doesn't care about black people I've ever seen