{"id":1027,"date":"2013-12-08T18:28:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-08T18:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/12\/kanye-west-the-higher-learning-of-the-college-dropout.html"},"modified":"2013-12-08T18:28:00","modified_gmt":"2013-12-08T18:28:00","slug":"kanye-west-the-higher-learning-of-the-college-dropout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/12\/kanye-west-the-higher-learning-of-the-college-dropout.html","title":{"rendered":"Kanye West: The Higher Learning of the College Dropout"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

by Joseph Boston<\/a><\/span>
R3 Contributor<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/span><\/div>\n
*First published at the Joseph Boston<\/a> Blog<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
When Kanye West was ten years he old he spent a year in China due to his mother\u2019s participation in an exchange program that enabled her to teach at\u00a0Nanjing University. For a young person of colour from the inner city of Chicago one cannot being to fathom the effect that this trip had on the mind of a young Kanye West and how that exposure opened up his mind to how large the world is and conversely opened him up to the possibilities of who he could be.<\/span><\/div>\n
As a social worker who has spent much of it working with youth from the US and now Australia, so much of young peoples potential is limited by their perspectives and for many, if not the vast majority of young black youth, that potential is limited by what they can see within their city or ten block radius. When we are exposed to experiences outside of our present reality it significantly expands the limitations of what is possible and what we can be.<\/span><\/div>\n
As I reflect back on my youth as a black male who was born and raised in the UK to a Jamaican mother and an African American father who was serving there in the US military during the height of the Cold War I feel blessed to have been exposed to the level of culture and diversity that I received.<\/span><\/div>\n
As the inverse to many African American youth, I assumed that my reality was the reality for all kids who looked like me until I started making trips back to the states to visit my father\u2019s family in Oklahoma City where I was confronted with a myopic understanding of culture that was foreign to me.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n

\u201cYou\u2019re from England?\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s Black people over there?\u201d\u00a0Their response shocking me because I assumed that people of color where almost everywhere. I also found my vernacular was out of place, the words I used being received as if I spoke a foreign tongue that delegitimised my Blackness. I was told, \u201cYou talk proper\u201d or \u201cYou sound white\u201d.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Like most kids, out of necessity and a desire to \u201cfit in\u201d I corrected my dialect so that I could speak in a manner that could be understood, that was more pleasing to\u00a0their<\/i>\u00a0ears and gave me some partial form of acceptance with my Black peers which is so important to a young kid of any color trying to find themselves.<\/span><\/div>\n
However, the conversations I had as child visting my cousins during those hot summers in OKC did not stop there and have continued well into adulthood. It\u2019s not that I wasn\u2019t speaking English or that my hue wasn\u2019t of a dark tone, it was that I was speaking a different type of English. A language that sounded a bit more refined and foreign to their ears, due to my exposure to culture and the arts and conversely, due to their lack of, perpetually\u00a0placing me on the periphery of Blackness in their eyes.<\/span><\/div>\n
I see this same disconnect in dialect in the discourses that Kanye has been having during his media tour of many of urban radio\u2019s most popular stations during the last week. They\u2019re talking but not necessarily having the same conversation.\u00a0Kanye\u2019s words are like the staccato of gun fire that erupt in his hometown of \u201cChiraq\u201d. We hear it but are perplexed, neither understanding where its coming from or the reason for it.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Between his time in China, the release of \u2018The College Dropout\u201d and more recently \u201cYeezus\u201d, Kanye has went on to earn a proverbial PHD during his time spent in Paris and has transformed from Kanye West to the nom de plume of his latest album. Like a prophetic figure cut in the mold of Moses, Kanye went up the mountain that he depicts in his current tour for the Yeezus album and he\u2019s come back down transfigured into Yeezus, his cultural exposure elevated to new heights, providing an expansion of language and insight to a world that was once foreign to him and one that is completely foreign to the average American, even more so to the average African American. This new \u201crevelation\u201d now placing him on the outside of the peripheries of Blackness that he had worked so hard to attain when he was in the more acceptable role of the \u201cCollege Dropout\u201d. Kanye returns off the mountain as Yeezus, angered to find us happy with our chitlins having seen that we\u2019ve been left out of so much more.<\/span><\/div>\n
In the free market world of laissez-faire free market capitalism these names represent the new plantation owners.\u00a0The lack of understanding in the reaction to Yeezus\u2019s \u201crants\u201d reflect the New Slave mentality that Yeezus is screaming about. Rap music, platinum necklaces, Maybachs and Roc-a-Fella tees represent the chitlins of the slave negro and rightly so for what are people who have never had the whole pig to know about the fruits of it?<\/span><\/div>\n
Sway perfectly captures the distance between what Yeezus is saying and what is understood during his interview with him when he humbly says \u00a0\u201dThese names you\u2019re saying sound all foreign to me bro\u201d.<\/span><\/div>\n
His statement serves as evidence of the marginalization that we have yet to be awakened to, reflective of a myopic understanding of the world and a lack of exposure to finances and culture by way of purposeful economic and societal marginalization.<\/span><\/div>\n
Thus, there is a loud chorus of dissenting voices that echo \u201cCharlamange the God\u2019s\u201d response to Yeezus during his interview with one of NY\u2019s most popular radio shows, Power 105.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t care about your designing sneakers and clothes. People don\u2019t care about your rich nigger problems. Those are rich nigger problems, the fact that there are fashion designers and Nike won\u2019t accept you\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We should care because this is deeper than rap. This is deeper than leather jogging pants or designing shoes for Nike. What Yeezus is talking about is Black Economic Empowerment. Not just for himself but also for African Americans which contrary to Charlamange the God\u2019s statements that Black revolutionaries didn\u2019t need money, has always been a central component of any justice movement from Martin to Malcolm. This is a conversation that is steeped in an understanding of wealth vs rich, something that comedian Chris Rock captures succinctly in this piece.<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
As Yeezus stated in the Breakfast Club interview \u201cWe ain\u2019t got it like that. We don\u2019t know nobody with a nice house. You know we don\u2019t know nobody with paper like that who we can go to when we\u2019re down\u201d.<\/span><\/div>\n
Yes, Kanye is a millionaire like other popular artists but their wealth is directly connected to their voice as it relates to the fickle whims of the music industry where you can easily be hot one summer and gone the next. Like the NFL, the music business, especially when it comes to hip hop, is a young man\u2019s game where the estimated playing career is \u201c3 summers\/seasons\u201d and then you\u2019re finished with many artists ending up broke like their athletic counterparts. It\u2019s a story as old as Motown. Jay-Z as the elder statesman of hip hop at 44 is an anomaly for his position, sitting in the mold of a Brett Favre.<\/span><\/div>\n
How many rappers have come and gone since Jay-Z\u2019s time? How many \u201cclothing lines\u201d whose viability is connected to the relevancy of that artists voice or hip hop trends have come and gone: G-Unit, Karl Kani, Wu-Wear, Phat Farm, Fubu, Baby Phat, Sean John, Rocawear.. the list goes on and on.<\/span><\/div>\n
What Yeezus is fighting for is couched in economic security for his family that transcends the now. He\u2019s speaking on legacy, something unfamiliar to people of colour, that goes on to his children and their children\u2019s children and that type of security can also be used to transform communities when in the hands of someone who has that vision.<\/span><\/div>\n
This is not just formal equality in the way we perceive equality today ( the right to vote, equal opportunity to apply for jobs etc) but\u00a0equality in substance<\/b>\u00a0because as the data bears out, African Americans are economically\u00a0enslaved<\/b>\u00a0and\u00a0marginalised<\/b>. We are in the era of new slavery and we are the new slaves.<\/span><\/div>\n
In David Garrow\u2019s Pulitzer Prize winning book \u201cBearing the Cross: Martin Luther King and the SCLC\u201d Garrow recollects a time where Dr King arrives to speak at a church rally in Harlem and he is pelted with eggs.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n

\u201cFor King it was one of those moments when you think about what you are going through and the sacrifices and suffering you face that your own people don\u2019t have an understanding- not even an appreciation of one\u2019s efforts\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While Yeezus certainly isn\u2019t King, his message is \u201cKing-like\u201d when it comes to the importance of Black economic empowerment.\u00a0It ain\u2019t all good is converted into \u201cIt ain\u2019t Ralph tho\u201d by way of brand labelling- fitting language for the discourse of new slavery. Indeed it isn\u2019t and we would do well to pay attention, despite our lack of cultural exposure and understanding because class is in session.<\/span><\/div>\n
Follow Joseph on Twitter @josephlaboston<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Joseph BostonR3 Contributor *First published at the Joseph Boston Blog When Kanye West was ten years he old he spent a year in China due to his mother\u2019s participation in an exchange program that enabled her to teach at\u00a0Nanjing University. For a young person of colour from the inner city of Chicago one cannot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nKanye West: The Higher Learning of the College Dropout<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"by Joseph BostonR3 Contributor*First published at the Joseph Boston BlogWhen Kanye West was ten years he old he spent a year in China due to his mother\u2019s\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/12\/kanye-west-the-higher-learning-of-the-college-dropout.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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