#also i do love kim i just . a lot of racism surrounding the way (mostly twitter people tbh) he is treated

[57sfinest]

2, 3, 7 and 24 lol

2. a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

mmm i'm gonna go a little sideways from the prompt because harry isn't necessarily my fave but i just do want to say i don't think this man is topping. i think the emotional fallout from martinaise has stripped him of his ability to ever top or dom or be in charge in any sexual capacity like ever again. someone tries to get him to top and he gets the thousand yard stare like oh no... i dont top..... not since The Accident..... like already immediately post-amnesia you've got these comments saying sober sex is scary for him, his blood flow is bad from the alcoholism so his dick is operating at a generous 48% capacity, he's got chronic pain + will probably feel that bullet in his thigh forever and ever and this is a perfect storm that equals to This Man Aint Topping. physical and emotional agony if this man even tries. you put this man in a situation where he's expected to top and he says 'i can't... not after everything women have been through...'

that being said i think if you can convince him that there is a shortage of tops for the future communist utopia of revachol & you remind him "from each according to his means" etc he might try. like if you tell him mazov topped then it might actually work. but otherwise call this man a cheese pizza cuz there's no topping here

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

there have been many. but i think one that angers me the most is the idea that dora was somehow wrong for leaving harry. i did see once (many months ago) that she should have stayed because of what the breakup did to him and i know for a FACT that person completely missed the point of the last dream on the seafort. that shit was crazy

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

i'm very good at maintaining my own separate opinions so there's no character i HATE but [strapping on my bulletproof vest] kim took a back burner in my brain for a while because the sheer volume of genuine sincere unironic 'kim is a good cop and his purpose in life is to be harry's support system' i saw was like. mind numbing. i'm not talking about lighthearted fun with his character i was seeing people genuinely believing that shit and i got so sick of it that kim became a secondary consideration for a while. i do love him his character is super interesting & i'm currently working on an analysis, but i think it was a case of oversaturation for a few months there

24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

i am lucky to have not seen much but i think one of the things i see start some conflict is that there are 2 equally good and valuable types of Disco Enjoyment: 1) silly goofy fun and 2) full 10th-grade-english-teacher-mode analysis. and people can do both but i personally have deleted several anons who i think didn't realize this fact and therefore took my character analysis posts as personal attacks on the Silly Goofy Fun activities rather than the braindumps they were. most of the rancid shit i HAVE seen has mostly come down to: we are looking at the same thing through different levels of detail and canon-compliancy and are forgetting that Ignoring That Shit is an option

[bestworstcase]

what are some of your eldritch horror inspirations?

oh hm lets see

in no particular order: 

my first introduction to the genre was actually a kim possible fanfic series? i remember reading it as a teen and being like woah

the discworld series to an extent? pratchett’s riffs on the genre are excellent, in particular those from later novels in the series eg the summoning dark. (thud! was actually my first discworld novel for some baffling reason and i spent the whole book like “i have no idea what’s going on but i love this” skjdffklshsdk). this has also definitely had an impact on my lean into the more humanist or optimistic end of the scale

gideon the ninth is not eldritch horror per se but hot damn if it doesn’t have some glorious imagery. 

annihilation (the book much moreso than the film, though the film has some nice visuals too). i keep meaning to read the other books in the trilogy but haven’t got around to it yet. the crawler hoo boy 👀👀👀

a pretty large assortment of books and short stories and plays actually. probably too many to list really; not all of them are eldritch horror themselves but anything with the right atmosphere or aesthetic or lore tends to work its way into my brain as an inspiration for my own particular blend of eldritch horror and dark fantasy; as a random selection off the top of my head, poe’s entire oeuvre, the road, the bacchae, euripedes in general actually, pretty much anything that was inspired by the year without a summer lmao, the dragonoak trilogy and sam farren’s work in general... magical realism anything, marisol comes to mind in particular just for its extra closeness to theatre of the absurd... 

this one is a bit silly and honestly mostly just because it’s the Queen Hyperfixation and i will find a way to connect it to every single one of my other interests somehow, but alice’s adventures in wonderland, through the looking glass, and the hunting of the snark have all had a pretty marked influence on my development as a writer and have absolutely contributed to how i approach eldritch horror tropes in my own writing; and also nonsense literature is basically absurdist eldritch horror for children. 

(especially the hunting of the snark, tbh. like go read it now if you haven’t before; it’s a treat and it’s gay and boojums are 100% just your classic eldritch abomination presented through a light-heartedly witty, child-friendly lens.)

relatedly: i love the american mcgee alice games. they riff on some aiw-related tropes that irritate me but idc that much because the atmosphere and aesthetic is just. so good and the gameplay is fun

relatedly again: a blade so black and the subsequent books in the trilogy (one of which isn’t due out until next year i’m suffering) do some really great stuff with nightmares as creatures that are empowered by humanity’s fears and, esp in the second book, the weird mystery of wonderland itself. and is just a neat urban fantasy take on alice in wonderland in general.

pathygen’s work and especially strings has been a big source of inspiration for me in the last, like, eight or nine months since we met. read it.

adhd distractibility has me stalling out in the middle of season 3 of the magnus archives but. yknow. it’s my jam 👌

like, theatre of the absurd and theatre of cruelty? in particular i recall a production of waiting for godot which i saw in college that leaned very hard into a horror-esque reading of the play and that was kind of a game-changer for my own creative outlook; in general these forms of theatre and the experiences they seek to evoke and the narratives they center share a lot of emotional overlap with the experience of good eldritch horror and, like aiw, have had a significant influence on my writing generally.

darkest dungeon is really fun and has a great aesthetic and strikes exactly the right balance between bleak and hopeful. the crimson court dlc especially was a total game-changer for how i think about vampires because holy shit

it’s not eldritch horror per se but subnautica is like. its ability to provoke dread is second only to the trial of blindness in hellblade (which is also def an inspiration, though again not eldritch horror per se. the enemy designs are really good tho) and the creature designs and lore are super cool and it does an excellent job of of getting across that... feeling of being insignificant in a vast uncaring cosmos (or in this case: ocean planet infected with virulent water-borne bacteria) and that’s enough to make it like, eldritch horror-adjacent in my mind.

tyranny is? another odd one in that it isn’t eldritch horror by any stretch of the imagination but idk. there’s something about the lore surrounding the archons and the spires + oldwalls that speaks to me and i love that so much of it is simply left unexplained. not in a way that feels half-assed or like the lore wasn’t well thought out, but rather in a way that truly gets across the feeling of an ancient civilization whose culture and magic/technology have decayed and been suppressed to the point of being completely lost by the time of the game; that’s a hard balance to strike and it’s totally my jam. 

my gf got me into pathologic and i am veeeery slowly playing my way through the original game rn and holy shit. holy shit. the atmosphere and the slowly unfolding lore and increasingly bizarre plague itself and the despair and the grind it’s all so good.

i still need to actually play bloodborne, it’s been on my list forever, but every image and video i’ve ever seen is. hoo boy. hoooooo boy. 

and honestly??? growing up as a very non-spiritual person in an evangelical family i think definitely predisposed me toward this genre because, idk. god as presented by evangelical christians is an eldritch abomination and i don’t have the spiritual inclination to convince me otherwise. so that’s something i draw from a bit as well lol

also as a final note i think it’s v important when talking about eldritch/cosmic/lovecraftian horror and inspirations thereof to say that hp lovecraft (and many of the contemporaries of his who participated in the expanded/shared universe we now call the cthulhu mythos) was virulently racist and xenophobic and this absolutely had an impact on his creative work. they codified this genre and that means that racism and xenophobia is kind of baked in to a lot of the basic tropes and they must be very rigorously, very critically evaluated when we use them to create new fiction. 

[aion-rsa]

Cobra Kai and the Debate Around Cultural Appropriation

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains Cobra Kai spoilers.

Why aren’t there more Asians in Cobra Kai? 

Since Cobra Kai first premiered on YouTube, The Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, and other publications have called out the series for its lack of Asianness. The series also scored poorly on UCLA’s 2020 Hollywood Diversity Report. Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) and Carmen (Vanessa Rubio) are the only non-white main characters. This was exacerbated when the recently-released season 3 excluded Aisha (Nichole Brown), a major character of color who was a fan favorite. 

Granted, Cobra Kai does have a few non-white actors in reccurring roles. They just aren’t leads. Nate Oh plays Nathaniel, but he is a minor character with minimal development. Kyler (Joe Seo) was the first bully to appear in Cobra Kai constantly harassing Miguel. To their credit, the writers made him a wrestler instead of a stereotypical martial artist, just because he’s Asian. Cobra Kai has revealed character backstories for nearly all the show’s bullies, including Kreese (Martin Kove), but not Kyler. He remains a secondary character, but has potential to emerge as a major villain next season. 

Season 3 also enjoyed some added Asian representation during Daniel’s trip to Okinawa with heartfelt cameos from Tamlyn Tomita (Kumiko) and Yuji Okumoto (Chozen) from The Karate Kid Part II. While both characters figure largely in the canon, their Cobra Kai appearance was too limited to be as Asian inclusions to the main cast. Perhaps they’ll return in season 4. Maybe Johnny (William Zabka) needs to learn Chozen’s pressure point technique too. (I would love to see Johnny in Okinawa.)

This is all to say that Cobra Kai is not as diverse or Asian-centric as one might expect a property about martial arts to be. But that just makes it the latest in a long line of Karate Kid properties that has had to grapple with the reality of how karate operates in a globalized world. 

In some ways, The Karate Kid was groundbreaking for Asian representation when it premiered in 1984. Daniel’s (Ralph Macchio) crane kick inevitably degraded into a mocking anti-Asian gesture. The pose is iconic, but mostly as ridicule. Even Will Smith took a poke at it when Morita made a guest appearance on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And yet, Mr. Miyagi’s (Pat Morita) remarkable backstory in the film brought attention to the plight of Japanese Americans like never before.

In Miyagi’s poignant drunken scene, we discover that he was a veteran of the 100th/442nd Infantry Battalion (a.k.a. the ‘Purple Heart’ Battalion) and his wife died during childbirth in a WWII internment camp. The scene was almost cut because the filmmakers felt the tangent interrupted the momentum of the action. In retrospect, it was likely that this very scene sealed Morita’s Oscar nomination. Manned completely by Japanese Americans, the 100th/442nd was the most decorated unit for its size and service in U.S. history. 

Japan was the enemy, so the Battalion was constantly confronted by racism from surrounding ranks. The Army didn’t quite know what to do with them. They were sent on suicide missions in Europe, but they prevailed and kept coming back for more. They were awarded 18,143 individual decorations including 52 Distinguished Crosses and 21 Congressional Medals of Honor. The Medal of Honor is America’s highest award for combat valor. Miyagi has one. Recognizing the Purple Heart Battalion gave The Karate Kid a lot of soul, but Miyagi’s medal was historically awkward. The real story exposes deeper racial discrimination. 

The Next Karate Kid begins with Miyagi attending a 442nd commendation. In a respectful cameo, appearing as the Senator at that event was Daniel Inouye, an actual veteran of the 442nd who lost his arm in combat. He was the first Japanese American to serve in the House and Senate, and was a recipient of the Medal of Honor. However, The Next Karate Kid came out in 1994, six years before he received it. Twenty of the Medals of Honor that 100th/442nd vets received were upgrades awarded in 2000 after Congress rectified the oversight. The only one prior to that was given to Pfc. Sadao Munemori posthumously. He gave his life jumping on a grenade to save his comrades. When Daniel met Miyagi, no living Asian vets had a Medal of Honor.

On a personal note, my grandfather was Captain Taro Suzuki of the 100th Battalion. Like so many of his comrades, he was wounded in action. His right hand was permanently crippled, and he still had so much shrapnel in his body that he couldn’t pass through a metal detector. I inherited his Purple Heart which I cherish like the LaRussos treasure Miyagi’s medal. I heard his war stories growing up. The Karate Kid was the first time I saw his battalion represented in a movie. Miyagi’s drunken scene is still intensely moving and personal for me. 

Morita died in 2005 so Miyagi only appears in Cobra Kai flashbacks culled from the original movies. Although the series goes to great lengths to honor him, the lack of any Asian leads does give credence to those accusations of cultural appropriation and whitewashing. The thing is, much of the martial arts scene in the Western world has already been, for lack of a better term, whitewashed. And one character’s journey (and the real life figure he’s based on), helps illustrate martial arts’ approach to worldwide growth.

In Cobra Kai season 3, Young Kreese’s journey mirrors the real-life experience of the action choreographer of the original films, Master Pat E. Johnson. Kreese learned martial arts from his Caucasian commander, Captain Turner (Terry Serpico), who learned it while serving in Korea from Master Kim Sun-Yung. It was actually Korean Tang Soo Do, not Karate. Johnson learned Tang Soo Do from Master Kang Lo Hee while stationed as a U.S. Army chaplain in Korea. This is how Tang Soo Do spread westward. Many of the leading American martial arts proponents are not Asian. 

Today, martial arts belong to the world. For generations, Asian traditional martial arts have striven to propagate themselves globally. Judo and Taekwondo have become Olympic events and Karate was going to be added in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. It’s still on track when the games are rescheduled this summer. International organizations are found in every major martial arts style now and they are continuing to spread. So, it’s not entirely fair to begrudge the diaspora’s non-inclusivity. 

While The Karate Kid brought martial arts to the San Fernando Valley, other films and shows have spread the martial diaspora globally. The Blaxploitation genre glorified martial arts with its own unique take on the culture. Netflix’s Seis Manos is a Kung Fu based adult animated series set in Mexico. Although it does have a leading Asian role in Chiu (Vic Chao), is this cultural appropriation? Indian movie stars like Tiger Shroff and Akshay Kumar have brought martial arts to Bollywood in force with films like Commando, Baaghi, and Khiladi. That’s not Asian cultural appropriation, even though India is a different region of Asia where we don’t typically associate martial arts. 

Nevertheless, the international spread of Asian martial arts does not give filmmakers carte blanche to deny whitewashing and cultural appropriation. We must not go back to the days of Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins where Joel Grey played Chuin with slant eye makeup. 

Whether Cobra Kai culturally appropriates Asian culture or not, it can certainly increase its diversity. The setting, West Valley High School, is attended by students from Encino and Reseda. While Encino is over 80% white, Reseda is over 50% Hispanic and over 11% Asian. Statistically, the inclusion of Miguel and Carmen isn’t enough. The Karate Kid franchise was pivotal for representation. Conversations about appropriation and whitewashing aside, Cobra Kai can at least honor the franchise’s tradition and increase its diversity next season. 

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Cobra Kai season 3 is available to stream on Netflix now.

The post Cobra Kai and the Debate Around Cultural Appropriation appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[transracialqueer]

Five Potential Side Effects of Transracial Adoption

by Sunny J Reed

A trans- anything nowadays is controversial, but one trans- we don’t hear enough about are transracial adoptees. This small but vocal population got their title from being adopted by families of a different race than theirs — usually whites. But adoption, the so-called #BraveLove, comes with a steep price; often, transracial adoptees grow up with significant challenges, partly due to the fact that their appearance breaks the racially-homogenous nuclear family mold.

I am transracially adopted. My work is an outgrowth of my experience, research, and conversations with other members of the adoption triad; that is, adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents. This piece is a response to the misunderstandings and assumptions surrounding transracial adoption, and I hope it brings awareness to some rarely-discussed side-effects of the practice. While this isn’t an exhaustive list, by any means, these are just a few of the struggles that many transracial adoptees grapple with on a daily basis.

1. Racial Identity Crises, or “You Mean I’m Not White?”

Racial identity crises are common among transracial adoptees: what’s in the mirror may not reflect which box you want to check. I grew up in a predominantly white town that barely saw an Asian before — let alone an Asian with white parents. Growing up, I’d forget about my Korean-ness until I’d pass a mirror or someone slanted their eyes down at me, reminding me that oh yeah, I’m not white.

There’s a simple explanation for this confusion: “As members of families that are generally identified as white,” writes Kim Park Nelson, “Korean adoptees are often assimilated into the family as white and subsequently assimilated into racial and cultural identities of whiteness.”

Being raised in an ethnically-diverse area with access to culturally-aware individuals would help keep external reactions in check, but still belies the race-based role you’re expected to play in public. Twila L. Perry relates an anecdote illustrating the complexities of being black but raised in a white family:

“A young man in his personal statement identified himself as having been adopted and reared by white parents, with white siblings and mostly all white friends. He described himself as a Black man in a white middle-class world, reared in it and by it, yet not truly a part of it. His skin told those whom he encountered that he was Black at first glance, before his personality-shaped by his upbringing and experiences-came into play.”

Positive racial identity formation might be transracial adoption’s greatest challenge since much of the dialogue related to race and color begins at home. Multiracial and interracial families sometimes have difficulties finding the language to discuss this problem, so it’s an uphill climb for transracial parents (Same Family, Different Colors is a great study on this).

Parents can begin by talking openly about their child’s race. Acknowledging differences is not racist, nor does it draw negative attention to your child’s unique status in your family. Instead, being honest about it places your child on the path to self-acceptance.

2. Forced Cultural Appreciation (à la “Culture Camps”)

Picture culture camp like band camp (no, not quite the band camp talked about in American Pie). The big difference is that, unlike band camp, culture camp expects you to learn heritage appreciation in the span of just one week instead of how to better tune your trumpet. Sometimes adoption agencies sponsor such programs, designed to immerse an adoptee in an intense week or two of things like ethnic food, adoptee bonding, and talks with real people of your race, as opposed to you, the poseur.

These camps often get the side-eye — and rightfully so. Critics argue that “fostering cultural awareness or ethnic pride does not teach a child how to deal with episodes of racial bias.”

Much like part-time church-going does little in the way of earning your way to the Pearly Gates, once-yearly visits with people that look like you won’t make you a real whatever-you-are. I know culture camps aren’t going away, so a better solution would be using these events as supplements to whatever you’re doing at home with your child, not as the sole source of heritage awareness. And yes, racial self-appreciation should be a lifelong project.

3. Mistaken Identities -aka — “I’m Not the Hired Help”

Transracial adoptees’ obvious racial differences provoke brazen inquiries regarding interfamilial relationships. Having “How much did she cost?” and “Is she really your daughter?” asked over your head while being mistaken for your brother’s girlfriend does not contribute to positive self-image. It publically questions your place in the only family you’ve ever known, setting the stage for insecure attachments and self-doubt.

Mistaken identities aren’t just awkward, they’re insulting. Sara Docan-Morganinterviewed several Korean adoptees regarding what she describes as “intrusive interactions,” and found that “participants reported being mistaken for foreign exchange students, refugees, newly arrived Korean immigrants, and housecleaners. [One adoptee] recalled going to a Christmas party where someone approached her and said, ‘Welcome to America!’”

Obvious racism aside, transracial adoptees often find themselves having to validate their existence, which is something biological children are unlikely to face. Docan-Morgan suggests that parents’ responses to such interactions can either reinforce family bonds or weaken them, so expecting the public’s scrutiny and preparing for it should be a crucial piece in transracial adoptive parent education.

4. Well-Meaning, Yet Unprepared Parents

Sure, they’ll be issued a handy guide (here’s one from the 1980s) on raising a non-white you, but beyond a few educational activities and get-togethers with other transracial families, they’re on their own (unless online forums count as legitimate resources).

Some parents may good-heartedly acknowledge your heritage by providing dolls and books and eating your culture’s food. Others may mistakenly adopt a colorblind attitude, believing they don’t see color; they just see people. But, as Gina Miranda Samuels says, “Having a certain heritage, being given books or dolls that reflect that heritage, or even using a particular racial label to self-identify are alone insufficient for developing a social identity.”

Regarding colorblindness, Samuels explains that it risks “shaming children by signaling that there is something very visible and unchangeable about them (their skin, hair, bodies) that others (including their own parents) must overlook and ignore in order for the child to be accepted, belong, or considered as equal.”

As mentioned in point #1 above, talking about color while acknowledging your child’s race in a genuine, proactive way can counteract these problems. This means white parents must acknowledge their inability to provide the necessary skills for surviving in a racialized world; sure, it might mean admitting a parenting limitation, but working through it together might help your child feel empowered instead of isolated. Talking to transracial adoptees — not just those with rosy perspectives — will be an invaluable investment for your child.

I’d also suggest that white parents admit their privilege. White privilege in transracial adoption is beautifully covered by Marika Lindholm, herself a mother of transracially adopted children. Listening to these stories, despite their rawness, will help you become a better parent. By acknowledging that you may take for granted that being part of a societal majority can come with dominant-culture benefits, you open your mind to the fact that your transracial child may not experience life in the same way as you. It doesn’t mean you love your adopted child any less — but as a parent, you owe it to your child to prepare yourself.

5. Supply and Demand

During the early decades of transracial adoption (1940–1980), racial tensions in the United States were so high that few people considered adopting black babies. People clamored for white babies, leaving many healthy black children aging in the system. (Sadly, this still happens today.) And since adoption criteria limited potential parents to affluent white Christians, blacks encountered near insurmountable adoption roadblocks.

Korea offered an easy solution. “Compared to the controversy over adopting black and Native American children,” says Arissa H. Oh, author of To Save the Children of Korea, “Korean children appeared free of cultural and political baggage…Korean children were also seen as free in another important sense: abandoned or relinquished by faraway birth parents who would not return for their child.”

After the Korean War, adopting Korean babies became a form of parental patriotism — kind of like a bastardized version of rebuilding from within. During this time, intercountry adoption fulfilled a political need as well as a familial one. Eleana H. Kim makes this connection as well: “Christian Americanism, anti-Communism, and adoption were closely tied in the 1950s, a period that witnessed a proliferation of the word “adoption” in appeals for sponsorship and long-distance fostering of Korean waifs and orphans.”

Although we’ve seen marked declines in South Korean adoptions, intercountry and transracial adoptions continue today, retaining some of their politically-motivated roots and humanitarian efforts. We need to keep this history in mind since knee-jerk emotional adoptions — despite the time it takes to process them — have serious repercussions for the children involved.

But we can make it better

None of this implies that transracial adoption is evil. Not at all. Consider this missive as more of a PSA for those considering adoption and a support piece for those who are transracially adopted. I’m aware that I’ll receive a lot of pushback on my work, and that’s okay. I’m writing from the perspective of what I call the “original transracial adoption boom,” and I consider myself part of one the earliest generations of transracial adoptees. Advancements in the field, many spurred by adoptees like myself, have contributed to many positive changes. However, we still have work to do if we’re going to fix an imperfect system based on emotional needs and oftentimes, one-sided decision making.

(source in the notes)

[theconservativebrief]

Kanye West visited the White House Thursday, ostensibly to discuss criminal justice reform. That didn’t really happen.

Instead, West, seated across from Trump in the Oval Office, surrounded by reporters, launched into a rambling soliloquy that touched on seemingly everything else, including planes, the 13th Amendment, and mental health.

Rolling Stone’s Ryan Bort described the scene:

He pitched the president on a plane to replace Air Force One called the “iPlane 1.” He talked about how he had been misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder (he was actually just sleep-deprived). He became the first person to publicly say “motherfucker” in the president’s office. Bloomberg White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs called it the wildest Oval Office event she’s ever seen.

A particularly surreal moment came when West explained why he finds Trump so appealing. “I’m married to a family where there’s not a lot of male energy going on,” he said. “There’s something about … I love Hillary. I love everyone. But the campaign ‘I’m With Her’ just didn’t make me feel, as a guy that didn’t get to see his dad all the time, like a guy who could play catch with his son. There was something about when I put this hat on that made me feel like Superman. That’s my favorite superhero. You made a Superman cape for me.”

While initial reports said West would visit the White House to talk about policy, the meeting served a second, arguably more important purpose: to mark the culmination of months of highly publicized exchanges between Trump and West. Just six months ago, West began effusively praising the president, referring to him as a “brother” and fellow wielder of “dragon energy,” before posting images of himself wearing a signed “Make America Great Again” hat.

That was followed by a string of shared compliments between the two that continues, with West notably grabbing the mic after a recent taping of Saturday Night Live to express his support for the president. “If someone inspires me and I connect with them, I don’t have to believe in all they policies,” West told the audience, shortly after claiming that Democrats conspired “to take the fathers out the home and promote welfare.”

West isn’t limited to only praising Trump. He’s also tweeted approvingly about far-right commentators like Turning Point USA’s Candace Owens, who called Black Lives Matter protesters, “whiny toddlers pretending to be oppressed” and said that post-Charlottesville concerns about rising white nationalism are “stupid.” West has also attracted attention for his own comments that “slavery was a choice” and his more recent remarks that the 13th Amendment — which outlawed slavery — should be abolished.

It’s all marked a controversial — and in some ways confusing — evolution for the rapper and producer who famously declared “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” back in 2005. (West attempted to walk back his prior comment back on Thursday, saying that the remark represented a “victimized mentality.”) In his earlier years, West positioned himself as a black artist unafraid to discuss the realities and possibilities of blackness.

That he has thrown his support behind a White House at odds with those things — and that his support has been followed by West renouncing much of his past self — has been a strange thing to witness.

But in 2018, some of that confusion may be misplaced. After all, West’s interactions with and praise of Trump date back further than this year. And West first flirted with far-right imagery and weird ideas about slavery years ago, well before Trump entered the political stage.

What we are seeing now then, may not exactly be something completely new. But West’s evolution from outspoken rapper to outspoken rapper and prominent Donald Trump supporter has still been one that has captured a fair amount of attention, not only for what it reveals about West himself, but for how it has come to capture concerns about race and racism in the Trump era.

West has long been known for his tendency to make a public spectacle, whether through on the fly comments or behavior. There was 2004 when, after losing a Best New Artist Award at the American Music Awards, the rapper left the show, later telling reporters that he was “robbed.” One year later, West slammed media depictions of black hurricane victims and declared that President Bush didn’t care about black people during a telethon raising funds for survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

Then there was his 2009 outburst at the MTV Video Music Awards, in which he cut off Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech to declare that Beyoncé had the superior video. The VMAs moment also put West in the path of another president, Barack Obama, who was caught on a hot mic calling the rapper a “jackass” for his outburst. West later referenced the incident in his 2010 single “Power” with the line, “they say I was the abomination of Obama’s nation.”

As each of these moments unfolded, West’s track record became a bit more clear. The outbursts showed that West was not only willing to blurt out what was on his mind at any given moment, but also that he was aware of how to take an event and put his thoughts and opinions front and center.

This belief, coupled with West’s larger than life self-image — the rapper wore a crown of thorns on a 2006 Rolling Stone cover and declared himself Yeezus seven years later— suggested that West wanted to wield influence over more than music. He wanted to be seen as a leader of American culture itself.

That belief was not entirely unfounded — West was one of the most prolific producers of the 2000s and helped expose a number of artists to the industry — and he’s become as well known for his outbursts as his own hits. But while West has always been controversial, his boasts and outbursts in the 2000s were seen as fitting into a broader commentary on race and racism that was at times reflected in his music, a reminder that one of the biggest artists of the decade was confident in his blackness and wanted to challenge those who he perceived as disrespecting that.

But over time, he started to push boundaries in ways that were harder for fans to defend.

One moment that is perhaps particularly relevant in hindsight: In 2013, well into the promotional tour for West’s sixth album Yeezus, he was spotted wearing a coat with a Confederate battle flag patch on its sleeve. The flag also made an appearance on tour apparel.

When a Los Angeles radio station asked West about the flag that year, he gave an answer that tracks pretty closely with some of his more recent statements:

“React how you want,” he said. “Any energy is good energy. You know the Confederate flag represented slavery in a way – that’s my abstract take on what I know about it. So I made the song ‘New Slaves.’ So I took the Confederate flag and made it my flag. It’s my flag. Now what are you going to do?”

In the years following the Confederate flag incident, West wouldn’t speak as much about politics, though he was photographed with his wife Kim Kardashian West and Hillary Clinton in 2015, the same year that he proudly claimed that he would run for president in 2020. A year later, West offered a more direct commentary on politics during a post-election stop on his Saint Pablo Tour. This time, West was very clear about who he was supporting, telling concertgoers, “If I would’ve voted, I would’ve voted for Trump.”

Prior to this, West had referenced Trump’s wealth in a handful of songs and the 2016 video for “Famous,” in which a naked figure of Donald Trump joined West in bed with synthetic replicas of Kim Kardashian West, Taylor Swift, and others.

But in his speech onstage that November, West explained that it was Trump’s speaking style, not his policies, that were so attractive: “There’s nonpolitical methods to speaking that I like, that I feel were very futuristic. And that style, and that method of communication, has proven that it can beat a politically correct way of communication.”

A month later, West was spotted in Trump Tower for a meeting that West said was about “multicultural issues.” As they stood in front of reporters, then-president-elect Trump spoke of the rapper as if he were an old friend. “We’ve been friends for a long time,” Trump told reporters. “We discussed life.”

At the time, West’s meeting with Trump sparked confusion, but was mostly seen as a reflection of the two men’s somewhat similar personalities and desire to for status. As Constance Grady wrote for Vox, West and Trump shared a mutually beneficial relationship, by “filling a void in each other’s public personas. Kanye uses Trump in his lyrics to signal the idea that he has access to wealth and power. Trump mentions Kanye in his interviews to signal the idea that famous people like him.”

By 2018, that relationship would attract much more scrutiny.

More than a year after West met with Trump in New York, and after several months of silence on Twitter, the rapper returned to the platform this past spring. His first tweets were relatively simple, announcements for upcoming albums and random bits of self-help knowledge. But then West began tweeting about politics, and later, Trump.

He started with an April 21 tweet about Owens. “I love the way Candace Owens thinks,” West noted, offering little explanation of exactly what he liked. A day later he tweeted, “The thought police want to suppress freedom of thought.” And three days after that, he began tweeting about the president.

“You don’t have to agree with trump but the mob can’t make me not love him,” West tweeted on April 25. In another message, he shared an image of himself wearing a signed Make America Great Again hat. “Love who you want to love. That’s free thought. I’m not even political. I’m not a democrat or a republican,” West tweeted that same day.

The messages quickly drew attention, including from Trump, who thanked West for the support and offered his own words of praise, tweeting that the rapper “performed a great service to the Black Community.” All the while, West continued to argue that his support of Trump was not due to any policy, but rather his support of the president’s thoughts and approach to politics.

When West faced criticism for his support, he countered that he was “refusing to be enslaved by monolithic thought,” arguing that critics were angry that he had broken with the beliefs of other African Americans and that black people were too focused on racism.

Things took a further turn when West began making comments on the history of racism and slavery in America that alternated between misinformed half-truths and wholly incorrect statements. While West said a lot of things in a relatively short period, the most notable was that “slavery was a choice,” a comment that fits into a long history of minimizing the damages of slavery. West initially doubled down by tweeting out apocryphal quotes from Harriet Tubman and comparing himself to Nat Turner, but later deleted the majority of his more controversial tweets from this moment.

For a brief period, as West geared up for a busy summer of album releases, it seemed like his political commentary would cease. But West called renewed attention to this conversation in September after his outburst at Saturday Night Live, which was followed by the aforementioned tweets calling for the abolition of the 13th Amendment.

Those comments reignited a storm of controversy around the rapper that largely revolves around two things: 1) his vocal support of Trump that is often accompanied by claims minimizing the historical and current effects of racism, and 2) his tendency to make completely inaccurate remarks about race and slavery.

However, this is not simply about what all of this means for West, but how it has been used to advance narratives about race and racism that affect others. There is a concern that West’s comments and support give cover to a presidential administration that has pursued a policy agenda that will negatively affect communities of color. Writer and author Ta-Nehisi Coates captured this concern in an essay about West earlier this year:

West might plead ignorance—“I don’t have all the answers that a celebrity is supposed to have,” he told Charlamagne. But no citizen claiming such a large portion of the public square as West can be granted reprieve. The planks of Trumpism are clear—the better banning of Muslims, the improved scapegoating of Latinos, the endorsement of racist conspiracy, the denialism of science, the cheering of economic charlatans, the urging on of barbarian cops and barbarian bosses, the cheering of torture, and the condemnation of whole countries. The pain of these policies is not equally distributed. Indeed the rule of Donald Trump is predicated on the infliction of maximum misery on West’s most ardent parishioners, the portions of America, the muck, that made the god Kanye possible.

West’s statements have made it clear that he does not understand this, or that if he does, he doesn’t care. On Thursday, he noted that it was Trump’s masculinity and his “male energy,” not his policy proposals, that made him a more attractive pick than Hillary Clinton. In an interview earlier this year, West said that “feeling is more important than thought. I had enough of the politics.”

In May, T.I., a rapper who has repeatedly collaborated with West and featured on his single, “Ye vs. the People,” told radio program the Breakfast Club that West was largely unaware of Trump policies like the travel ban.

“He loves the thought of [Trump]. … He defied all odds … and in his mind, that’s how it is,” T.I. explained. “He don’t know the things we know because he has removed himself from society to the point that it don’t reach him.”

But, even if West sees himself as removed from politics, it is impossible to separate his support of Trump from it. When West supports Trump and says he wants to talk about criminal justice reform and violence in Chicago for example, he is saying that he wants to sit with a president who has advocated for implementing stop and frisk in the city and whose attorney general is actively trying to stop a police consent decree between Chicago and the state of Illinois from going into effect.

Though West is willing to say that he disagrees with the president on some aspects of policing, statements like “we kill each other more than police officers” are more than enough to cancel that out.

Trump has repeatedly thanked West for his public statements of support, crediting them for a supposed increase in support from black voters (this was not actually the case), while conservative commentators have argued that West’s support is proof that Trump and the Republican Party at large are not racist. West, meanwhile, claims he’s changed the image of Trump supporters and MAGA-branded apparel. Even as West continues to declare his independence from politics, he is increasingly being positioned as a political ally not just to Trump, but to conservative politics in general.

The White House is revealing both a core misunderstanding of black politics and a cynicism about race in holding up West — even as he continues to make missteps on a range of political topics and makes grossly inaccurate remarks about racism and slavery — as an example for black voters to follow. While conservatives and Trump seem comfortable with West, they are by no means able to speak about race in a way that will move large numbers of the demographic to which they claim to be reaching out.

Original Source -> Kanye West’s confounding political evolution, explained

via The Conservative Brief