Intro:

Ta Nehisi Coates, A famous essayist known as the writer of the 5000-word essay "I'm

Not Black, I'm Kanye". This essay talks about how Kanye West devoted his love to

Donald Trump. West calls it “freedom of thought”. This raised many complications. The

rappers of the “rap” game were going against him because he has left his origins roots

and fled to join the power. Some of these rappers as you may know are pretty popular

nowadays such as T.I, Wendell Pierce, Snoop Dogg, Janelle Monae, Jordan Peele, and

John Legend. Ta nehisi Coates goes more in-depth in West’s “freedom of thought” this

will later be explained in the zoom in and zoom out. This links to the IB global area of

Culture, identity, and community narrowed down to the importance of identity and its

impact on one’s background.

Zoom in:

I chose this excerpt because it has a significant explanation of Ta Nehisi’s opinion on the

actions Kanye West has done. He proceeded to change identities and culture which led to

much controversy on him. Ta Nehisi wrote: “What Kanye West seeks is what Michael

Jackson sought—liberation from the dictates of that we. In his visit with West, the rapper

T.I. was stunned to find that West, despite his endorsement of Trump, had never heard of

the travel ban. “He doesn’t know the things that we know because he’s removed himself

from society to a point where it don’t reach him,” T.I. said. West calls his struggle the

right to be a “free thinker,” and he is, indeed, championing a kind of freedom—a white
freedom, freedom without consequence, freedom without criticism, freedom to be proud

and ignorant; freedom to profit off a people in one moment and abandon them in the next;

a Stand Your Ground freedom, freedom without responsibility, without hard memory; a

Monticello without slavery, a Confederate freedom, the freedom of John C. Calhoun, not

the freedom of Harriet Tubman, which calls you to risk your own; not the freedom of Nat

Turner, which calls you to give even more, but a conqueror’s freedom, freedom of the

strong built on antipathy or indifference to the weak, the freedom of rape buttons, pussy

grabbers, and fuck you anyway, bitch; freedom of oil and invisible wars, the freedom of

suburbs drawn with red lines, the white freedom of Calabasas.” This quote shows how Ta

Nehisi explains the fact how Kanye west has changed identities and impacted his culture.

His community all revolted against him. This connects to the Ib global issue that was

mentioned “the importance of identity and its impact on one’s background”. Kanye’s

words impacted the society and environment around him. Ta Nehisi proves that freedom

of thought is a way to hide the real truth behind what Kanye says. He feels that he has

lost the battle from his origins against white supremacy. A popular quote mentioned by

Jim Henson is “If you can’t beat them, join them.” This is what Kanye felt like when he

lost this “battle”. Ta Nehisi uses a type of persuasive and analytical language and diction.

He shows the privileges and uses prioritized words to show that white supremacy is

powerful. Imagery is present throughout the big words that Ta Nehisi states in this

excerpt. “freedom, freedom without consequence, freedom without criticism, freedom to

be proud and ignorant; freedom to profit off a people”. These words have a strong

connotation towards Kanye’s actions. They refer to what he battled for.

Zoom out:

This excerpt can relate to many parts of this article. For example, a relation between

Michael Jackson and Kanye West is present in this excerpt. “Michael Jackson tapped his

foot and stones turned to light. Even his accouterments felt beyond me—the studded

jacket, the sparkling glove, the leather pants—raiment of the divine, untouchable by me,

a mortal child who squinted to see past Saturday, who would not even see Motown 25

until it was past 30, who would not even own a copy of Thriller until I was a grown man,

who no longer believed in miracles, and knew in my heart that if the black man’s God

was not dead, he surely was dying. And he had always been dying—dying to be white.

That was what my mother said, that you could see the dying all over his face, the

decaying, the thinning, that he was disappearing into something white, desiccating into

something white, erasing himself so that we would forget that he had once been Africa

beautiful and Africa brown” This excerpt relates to Kanye’s way to change to be white.

He wants to experience white privilege as stated above. Micheal Jackson was dying to be

white. He wanted the experiences of being white. Having more power than usual.

Personal:

My mains feelings about this global issue and excerpt is that people judge people for their

actions too much. It can pose a problem if someone leaves their culture behind for their

rivals. It can cause a big impact but it’s their choice of life. An example of this in

Morocco is related to the soccer player Munir El Haddadi. He played for the official
Moroccan soccer team until he encountered many problems with the core of the

Moroccan team. Instead of him fixing his issues, he decided to leave the Moroccan

national team and join the Spanish national team. Many people now criticize him as a

traitor. However, everybody has their own choice to think about things.