Title : "When you hear about slavery for 400 years ... For 400 years? That sounds like a choice.... You were there for 400 years and it's all of y'all. It's like we're mentally imprisoned."
link : "When you hear about slavery for 400 years ... For 400 years? That sounds like a choice.... You were there for 400 years and it's all of y'all. It's like we're mentally imprisoned."
"When you hear about slavery for 400 years ... For 400 years? That sounds like a choice.... You were there for 400 years and it's all of y'all. It's like we're mentally imprisoned."
Said Kanye West, reported in a lot of places. I'll link to CNN, which supplies a little of the criticism that predictably ensued and Kanye's clarification:"Of course I know that slaves did not get shackled and put on a boat by free will. My point is for us to have stayed in that position even though the numbers were on our side means that we were mentally enslaved... [T]he reason why I brought up the 400 years point is because we can't be mentally imprisoned for another 400 years. We need free thought now. Even the statement was an example of free thought. It was just an idea. [O]nce again I am being attacked for presenting new ideas."Kanye got our attention by saying something that seems wrong. And it's wrong in a direction that is precisely the way nearly everyone feels inhibited about going: failing to acknowledge the full horror of slavery. But Kanye claims freedom of thought, and once he got our attention, he added detail that you might feel compelled to think through. He knows people care about him and want to understand him, so we (not all of us, but many) want to understand his explanation. And it's not that confusing. He's not withholding empathy from the people who suffered in the past. He's calling people today to a higher ground of freedom. If you truly see the horror of forced slavery, why would you, who are physically, legally free, keep yourself in a condition of mental slavery?
It made me think of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song": "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery/None but ourselves can free our minds." The lyrics website Geniushas this annotation:
These lines were derived from a speech given by Marcus Garvey, a proponent of Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism:
We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mindMarcus Garvey is also a prophet in the Rastafari culture, which Bob Marley followed.
This idea that no one but ourselves can free our minds recalls an idea that predates the Renaissance, which is that if the mind is free, one can never be truly imprisoned. One example comes from “To Althea from Prison” by Richard Lovelace:
Stone Walls do not a Prison make,Mental slavery, Marley suggests, is the real slavery, the fundamental slavery from which one must free oneself.
Nor Iron bars a Cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an Hermitage.
Thus Article "When you hear about slavery for 400 years ... For 400 years? That sounds like a choice.... You were there for 400 years and it's all of y'all. It's like we're mentally imprisoned."
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