Why We Must Protect and Defend Kanye West at All Costs

Black Mental Health Matters and It’s Not Just About Kanye

It’s not just about Kanye, Kanye the artistic genius, Kanye the enigma, Kanye the billionaire, Kanye the presidential candidate, anymore. Anyone who believes that Black Lives Matter has two very vested interests in protecting Kanye and it isn’t about shutting him up on his illogical rants about enslavement or for his siding with Trump because of the indirect harm they cause us. We have to protect Kanye, because in protecting Kanye, we protect Black life. We protect Black viability for public office, and we protect Black rights to suffer from mental illness, like bipolar disorder, which his wife has acknowledged he has, and to get treatment and help when we need it.

In all these things, Kanye West deserves love, protection and help. Not because Kanye is special, but because Kanye is a person deserving inherently of love, protection, and help because he is a member of the human race.

But, we, the public, have to stop talking about Kanye the way we have been. We have to stop calling him a joke and a narcissist and incompetent even if we believe all these things to be true. Right now, it seems that his voice is being amplified in part to mock and ridicule Black life and to undermine the concept of capable Black…