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Whether Kanye West or Bevelyn Beatty, it both saddens and enrages me when Black people perform for or succumb to white supremacist capitalist patriarchy--such that they put their internalized ant-Blackness on display in the most gaudy and vulgar of ways.
What's interesting to me is the commonalities between West's and Beatty's engagements:
1. White Jesus takes center stage and is the impetus for their attacks on Black people.
2. While they both attack the idea of Black people mattering in general, they have a peculiar and focused hatred for Black women. For West, a particular target is Harriet Tubman. For Beatty, a particular target is Breonna Taylor...
(Here in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, in the paintings of dozens of names where Breonna's is the second in the list, the first name she painted over was, intentionally, Breonna's.)
3. White conservatives/evangelicals/bigots are eating this shit up as they can enjoy the infighting and see the potential "But my one Black friend says" materialize right before their eyes.
4. I think they also should be held accountable for the harm they're causing (I'm thinking specifically of Black children being exposed to this without the critical lens to contextualize it) and the anti-Blackness they're helping to fortify. What does restoration look like here?
PLEASE NOTE: If you are not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, if you aren't a person who is neuroatypical, if West or Beatty are not patients of yours, please don't discuss West's or Beatty's mental wellness. It's ableist to associate bad behavior with mental illness.
You can certainly discuss how anti-Blackness may, itself, have an impact on the psychological well-being of Black people, but please don't diagnose beyond that unless you have the credentials to do so.
Also, if you know of any pro-Black mental health resources (because the American medical complex is built on anti-Blackness), please feel free to list them in the responses to this post.
For me, what instances like this reinforce is that I can't count you as an accomplice simply because you're Black/woman/queer/disabled/poor or otherwise occupy a marginalized identity.
What matters just as much, if not more, is your ideology. If I had to choose between Clarence Thomas, the most anti-Black Supreme Court justice since Dred Scott decision, or the white folks on the street putting their lives on the line for Black Lives Matter, the choice is easy.
