Say it loud, "I'm Black and I'm proud!"

On Kanye West's envy of the Jewish people and what it teaches us

Ye, the Rapper formerly known as Kanye West in an interview with Tucker Carlson

In September 1968, several months after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, megastar musician James Brown released what became of sort of Black anthem and rallying cry for a community still reeling from King’s death. The hit song, Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud, featured “about 30 children from poor areas of Los Angeles in the call-and-response choruses” and was Brown’s attempt to leverage his fame to encourage Black people and heal a nation. The Godfather of Soul wanted to channel the anger of a people whose leaders or those sympathetic had been recently killed (President Kennedy — 1963, Malcolm X — ‘65, King — April ‘68, and Robert Kennedy — June ‘68), and he chose to instill pride and self-worth to a young generation.

On September 7 [1968…the song] became the highest new entry on the pop chart, the Billboard Hot 100, starting as high as No. 60. It was proof that [Brown] was reaching an audience of all creeds and colours, and the message spread like wildfire: a week later the King Records single was at No. 39, and in another five weeks, it was peaking at No. 10.

On October 8th and subsequent days, Kanye West (Ye) both tweeted messages that disparaged the entire Jewish community and gave one interview in particular on the popular podcast Drink Champs (now removed from YouTube). The entire interview was over three hours long and featured Ye making very Farrakhan-esque statements about the Jewish mafia, the Jewish media, and the Zionist Jews, making no real attempt to avoid complete generalizations or dangerous stereotypes. Last Monday, October 17th, the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel (IBSI) released its official statement condemning Ye’s antisemitism. However, I feel a personal need to address another very deep and pervasive issue. That is Ye’s jealousy of the Jewish community which he admitted and explained during the now infamous Drink Champs video.

I want my people to rise up like the Jewish people. I’m a competitor. I’m jealous of the Jewish community. I’m jealous of…how they don’t abort their babies. I’m jealous of…how they stay with their wives. I’m jealous of…how they do business together. I’m jealous of how they read their contracts and understand their contracts. I'm jealous of the way Jewish people do business, and I'm jealous not just for me but for our entire culture. I’m jealous of the Jewish culture.

Why would a self-made multibillionaire, hip-hop icon, and fashion mogul be jealous of anyone else, Jewish or not? The answer is that Ye does not see his individual success as satisfactory. He’s interested in the collective. Ye is comparing what he sees as the Jewish Community to what he sees as the Black Community and is lamenting the disparities. Simply put, Ye is not proud (or is not aware) of the true history of Black people in America. He does not know from whence he came, so he is projecting his anger onto the most visible and dynamic (and yes, stereotypical) representation of power and success — the Jewish people. I address this phenomenon in my book Zionism & the Black Church.

Especially in the Black community, we are at a moment in history where one of our greatest challenges is also fueling a rise in and acceptance of antisemitism: A lack of authentic education. Dr. Carter Woodson called it “Miseducation,” which is worse than a lack of education. Nearly 100 years ago, Dr. Woodson, the father of Black History, explained the goal of proper education by citing the Jewish people as an example.

“The mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in making a man think and do for himself just as the Jews have done in spite of universal persecution.”

As anti-Zionist and antisemitic propaganda was being introduced to the Black community via the younger civil rights leaders of the 1960s, Dr. King addressed the very misconceptions that Ye espoused. This is from King’s Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, 1968.

Negroes nurture a persistent myth that the Jews of America attained social mobility and status solely because they had money. It is unwise to ignore the error for many reasons. In a negative sense it encourages anti-Semitism and overestimates money as a value. In a positive sense the full truth reveals a useful lesson. Jews progressed because they possessed a tradition of education combined with social and political action.

In February 2021, IBSI Executive Director Joshua Washington wrote the article ESMC (Re)Education – Indoctrination at its Worst. The Ethnic Studies Curriculum Model (ESMC), also known as Critical Ethnic Studies, is part of the race-based, revisionist history efforts that, among many other things, infantilize Black students while idolizing and demonizing White and Jewish people. Critical Ethnic Studies has become required learning in all California State Universities and is spreading quickly throughout primary grades and universities across the country. This means that Black children whose knowledge of their history is comparable to Ye’s will be systematically taught to be victims — and they will likely not be self-made multibillionaires.

How did the saga of a people who went through centuries of slavery and another century of Jim Crow segregation and lynchings yet still survived and thrived become lost? Slaves and former slaves who fought valiantly in every war since the American Revolution, fought for their own freedom in the Civil War, went from 0% literacy to over 50% literacy in less than 50 years after slavery, built Black Wall Streets across the country, established the Tuskegee Institute, created the Harlem Renaissance, produced doctors, lawyers, inventors, and entrepreneurs before there was a civil rights movement, defined the fight for global civil rights (Iranian protesters are quoting Dr. King as you read this piece), and much, much more.

Last July, Glenn Loury, Ian Rowe, and Robert Woodson were all guests on Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson produced by the Hoover Institution. Here is the introduction provided on the YouTube channel.

Robert Woodson and IBSI Founder & CEO Dumisani Washington at the Douglass Leadership Institute Conference Our Faith, Our Family, Our Freedom in Atlanta, GA, October 2022

If there were a Mount Rushmore of American Black intellectuals, the three guests on this show would certainly be on it: Glenn Loury is a professor of the social sciences in the Department of economics at Brown [University], a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the host of his wildly successful podcast, The Glenn Show. Ian Rowe is the cofounder of Vertex Partnership Academies and the author of the new book Agency: The Four Point Plan (F.R.E.E.) for ALL Children to Overcome the Victimhood Narrative and Discover Their Pathway to Power. Robert Woodson is the founder of the Woodson Center, an organization devoted to “empowering community-based leaders to promote solutions that reduce crime and violence, restore families, revitalize underserved communities, and assist in the creation of economic enterprise.” In this wide-ranging conversation, the three men debunk The 1619 Project, advocate for the restoration of the Black family and the Black church, describe their own very different upbringings and formative experiences, and discuss the many reasons why they are optimistic about the future of Black Americans, despite the narrative commonly expressed in the media.

I highly recommend the entire video but will underscore one very pertinent exchange. After quoting economist Thomas Sowell’s 2014 article A Legacy of Liberalism in which Sowell factually debunks the myth that the War on Poverty did any good for Black families, host Peter Robinson said to the panel, “This is just staggering. From slavery to educational attainment, climbing out of poverty, intact families, and nobody knows about it! Why has this century (1860s - 1960s) of history been submerged?!”

Glenn Loury answered:

‘Cause it’s politically inconvenient to focus on it. I mean, there's no surprise here. Where did we start in 1865? You had 4 million people who had been enslaved persons suddenly emancipated and made citizens. They were largely illiterate, were largely landless. Some had skills because it was in the slave owners’ interest to have his property with skills, but most did not. So the saga of African-American history and post emancipation is largely a saga of victory over the conditions in which they were left at the present of the onset of their liberation.

Robinson replied, “and I maintain that properly understood, it is one of the great epics in all of American history.”

Last fall, I had the honor of preaching at Hope Community Church in Winston Salem, NC, led by the venerable Bishop Paul Lanier. The title of the sermon was Africa’s Prophetic Call to Zion which was actually part two of another sermon, The Restoration of the Black Father. In explaining the importance of authentic history and how I was raised by my parents to appreciate it, I shared the following.

When I consider what my ancestors have gone through, hundreds of years of slavery, another hundred years of Jim Crow segregation and still built Black Wall Street, still built the Tuskegee Institute, still fought for their own freedom, you know what I tell folks? I descended from superheroes!”

Like the example of Kanye West, some of what is manifested as antisemitism in the Black community is, at its root, jealousy of a Jewish community that is strong and prosperous. Ironically, history reveals that there was actually more cohesion and prosperity in the Black community prior to the late 1960s than today. This is not to say that there is no Black success and prosperity today. On the contrary, Black Americans continue to distinguish themselves in every facet of society. But the ravaged state of the Black family — with a 70% fatherless rate — reveals that there is a great need for restoration. As a pastor and Christian, I believe that restoration is coming. Though my opinion is biased, the song No Due Respect on my son Joshua’s (JoDavi) latest album, Zion captures the prophetic moment perfectly (as he quotes the prophet, Malachi).

The hearts of the fathers turn to the children

The hearts of the children return to their fathers

---

[1] From “Where Are We Going?” by M. L. King, Jr., 2010, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, p. 163. Copyright 1968 by Martin Luther King, Jr. Copyright.