Issue date: 10/26/05 Section: features

Versus Magazine Online [Image based format]

On Friday Sept 2 during a live broadcast of NBC's celebrity-filled benefit for the Victims of Hurricane Katrina, hip-hop star Kanye West diverged from the studio's script to speak his mind. When co-spokesman Mike Myers finished describing the devastation caused by the levees bursting, Kanye commenced saying "I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, "They're looting." You see a white family, it says, "They're looking for food."" Going further West said that American soldiers were in effect being given orders to go down to New Orleans and "shoot us" to curb looting. He also stated that America was structured to "help the poor, the black people, the less well off, as slow as possible" before concluding his tirade with the now infamous statement: "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

Initially upon hearing Kanye's remarks I snidely wondered what else it was possible to blame President Bush for. However, upon reflection, I know precisely where West's heart was because I, too, felt the same things while watching that footage; shock, rage, sorrow, helplessness, and one emotion above all - complete and profound embarrassment. As channel after channel depicted images of evacuees who looked like they had just come out of hell, I could not help but notice the majority was black and somehow that amplified their misery to me. Like I imagine West did, I sat there with two painful thoughts: 1. how can this be happening to our people? 2. What will everyone else think looking at this? Even an effort to get away worsened things as I turned to Ètat-Unis to see black women and children being driven out of New Orleans in canvas-less army trucks in a scene eerily familiar to those of African refugees fleeing the latest civil war or genocide. But Kanye, - you lost me at "shoot us."

Continued...

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