Words are powerful. Spewed or written, they can form the mighty winds of hate that gust and rage. That stir the storms and tides that can rise and surge into a destructive path of violence and murder. Create a culture of acceptance of the obscene and profane.
Words can carry the otherwise hidden deviance of hideous, hate-filled imaginations that lie deep in the heart against a people, a nation. Words of hate disparage, dehumanize, denigrate. They assemble the collective will and create faux justifications for mass murder, annihilation and genocide.
Hate speech — that which has ignited wars and mobilized hatemongers — has fueled the worst in mankind throughout history to act with insidious inhumanity against man based upon the abominable ideas and philosophies about a people due to their race, creed or color. It can be like a match dropped into a two-ton container of gasoline.
And while those words might be freely spoken in a republic, where “free speech” is protected by the First Amendment, they must not be without consequence.
Not Kanye West’s words of antisemitism. Not anyone else’s.
West’s mass cancellation sparked by his irreverence, arrogance and tirade of hate speech began last week with Adidas terminating its $1.5 billion contract with the Grammy-winning rapper and fashion mogul known as Ye, immediately killing his billionaire status.
Ye’s empire seemed to tumble like a house of cards as Gap and other companies followed suit. Even Ye’s wax figure at Madame Tussauds London has been removed from public view.
Fact is, it was hate speech. Period. Dangerous rhetoric. Not only because it targeted Jewish people, but because that kind of speech is a threat to us all. We are our brother’s keeper.
Indeed, the swiftness and totality with which Ye’s antisemitic rhetoric was met with sudden wrath might well serve as a warning to those with similar inclinations: Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.
If only this were so.
We must condemn antisemitism. And we must, as a society, also condemn all hate speech — racism and bigotry — refusing to ignore it when it rises like a flame, flickering red hot against a land parched of love, peace, tolerance and justice for all, whether Black, Hispanic, Islamic, gay, trans or disabled.
Here lately, I have seen — and heard — hate speech. Outside the doors of the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection. Emblazoned on confederate and Trump flags that waved boldly. On red MAGA hats as Trump zealots perpetuate the “big lie,” and politicians like Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville spit racist venom into a hateful wind that blows cold across America.
Hate speech is loud and clear when I see a white cop’s knee pressed against George Floyd’s neck. When white cops fatally shoot unarmed Black men but take white males fresh from committing a mass shooting safely into custody.
I hear hate speech in the lyrics of rappers that blare on urban radio in a blend of murder and misogyny that have become near anthems for a generation of Black youths as poor Black neighborhoods have become killing fields littered with shell casings and carnage.
I heard hate speech from Ye as he spoke ill of Black folk, diminished slavery and denigrated abolitionist Harriet Tubman with ignorant revisionist history, and more recently, wore a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt and cast aspersions about the Floyd’s murder.
Except none of that got him canceled.
Nor was Trump canceled for mocking a reporter with a disability. Or for his admission to being a sexual assaulter. Or for calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and assorted criminals. Or for refusing to denounce the Ku Klux Klan. This from a man who possessed the nuclear codes and the ability to summon an angry mob to attack the Capitol.
And I ask myself: Do white men get a pass? What about the companies that make billions of dollars producing the music that defiles and diminishes Black life irreparably? Who has the power to cancel them?
And why is Kanye’s head the only one on the chopping block when the storms and winds of hate speech still rage on?
#JusticeForJelaniDay
