Carole Boyce Davies, professor of Africana studies and English at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York: "Many documentations of the punishments meted out to people who dared exercise 'choice' not to stay enslaved are available. If We Must Die (2009) documents over 500 shipboard rebellions.... A whole genre of slave narratives and abolitionist work provides the information that Kanye needs to engage in an informed presentation of his ideas on slavery.... One can understand the frustration of Kanye West seeing no change in the Chicago of his childhood, even after having a politician from Chicago—Barack Obama—become president. Perhaps the critique of Obama has been silenced in favor of a celebratory narrative. This critique cannot come at the expense of denigrating all black people, which he does by suggesting that our people chose brutality and enslavement for 400 years without resisting. Clearly, Obama in eight years could not undo that same 400 years of degradation and its results. My advice to Kanye: Read. Maybe finish your degree, even doing online study. Donate to African American studies departments. Maybe name a fellowship after your mother."
Read the article in Newsweeks.
