Ta-Nehisi Coates: The struggle for not freedom, but "white freedom".

[DetlefK]

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/05/im-not-black-im-kanye/559763/

In his visit with West, the rapper T.I. was stunned to find that West, despite his endorsement of Trump, had never heard of the travel ban. “He don’t know the things that we know because he’s removed himself from society to a point where it don’t reach him,” T.I. said. West calls his struggle the right to be a “free thinker,” and he is, indeed, championing a kind of freedom—a white freedom, freedom without consequence, freedom without criticism, freedom to be proud and ignorant; freedom to profit off a people in one moment and abandon them in the next; a Stand Your Ground freedom, freedom without responsibility, without hard memory; a Monticello without slavery, a Confederate freedom, the freedom of John C. Calhoun, not the freedom of Harriet Tubman, which calls you to risk your own; not the freedom of Nat Turner, which calls you to give even more, but a conqueror’s freedom, freedom of the strong built on antipathy or indifference to the weak, the freedom of rape buttons, pussy grabbers, and fuck you anyway, bitch; freedom of oil and invisible wars, the freedom of suburbs drawn with red lines, the white freedom of Calabasas.

...

West, in his own way, will likely pay also for his thin definition of freedom, as opposed to one that experiences history, traditions, and struggle, not as a burden, but as an anchor in a chaotic world.

...

And so for Kanye West, I wonder what he might be, if he could find himself back into connection, back to that place where he sought not a disconnected freedom of “I,” but a black freedom that called him back—back to the bone and drum, back to Chicago, back to Home.

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This is neither new nor unique. As a foreigner, the obsession of the US with "FREEDOM (TM)" has always struck me as weird. And not just any definition of freedom, but the selfish one where your freedom nullifies the freedoms of other people.

A freedom where the freedom of speech means that you are entitled not to hear the speech of others.
(e.g. I remember an anecdote where a conservative was offended by a political t-shirt someone else wore. Being forced to read that t-shirt violated his First Amendment rights...)

A freedom where your freedom to own a gun trumps the freedom of others to live in security and without fear.
(e.g. I was told on this forum that such a thing as the freedom to live a life in security and without fear is not a thing because it's not in the Constitution. Yet, I was also told on this forum that the freedom to bear arms is universal, even if it's not in a country's constitution.)

A freedom where that which belongs to all of us may be used by one person to the advantage of this one person and to the disadvantage of the rest.
(e.g. When the Bundys used public land for private profit.)

A freedom where you have the right to ignore the rights to other people.
(e.g. When religious people reserve the right to discriminate. Or when parents endanger other parents' children by not vaccinating their own children.)

The freedom to pretend that you never needed the society that has supported you all your life.
(e.g. Denouncing taxes as theft. Or, on this very forum, denying that such a thing as a societal contract exists.)

The freedom of "I got mine, to hell with the rest of you."

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

1. K&FuckingR!