“I’ve been a longtime fan of Kanye West—mostly his music, but also his general creative endeavors—but I pretty much gave up on him after his batshit remarks about Jewish people, among other things. Now, he’s issued another apology, and this one seems to specifically address how his mental health impacted his mind and what he said. I guess my question is: Is it OK to forgive him? Or should we really just leave Kanye in the past?“
Dearly Beloved,
Forgiveness is more than okay – it is a gift of the Spirit. As soon as we decide on forgiveness, God’s own Spirit accompanies us into new vision and new desire.
The decision to forgive is an intellectual commitment. But the living substance of it flows from elsewhere. The intellectual commitment is a seed ripe with potential. From a seed, forgiveness releases you from the prison of someone else’s wrongdoing – whether that means complete indifference, or loving them through a very strategic accounting of their limitations.
Forgiveness’s objective is clear and self-possessed. But the strength to contend with this transcendent process – the strength to see something of God in the face of a “Monster” – is a miracle.
So, ultimately, the question is not about Ye’s “deserving” forgiveness. The question is about you – whether you actually need him to be who you want him to be, or if you can let go and let God.
Celebrity is such a bizarre concept, isn’t it? Most of us do not know, nor will we ever know, these people. Still, somehow, their unique public contributions loom so large that we develop complex parasocial “relationships” with their avatars. They become objects of aspiration and devotion. Their sensibilities take on an alchemical character whereby their
identities merge with our own. Their art marks moments that live with us forever, which fosters gratitude for having helped us hold on to memories that we’ve lost to time and space. (I, for one, will never forget SpelHouse Homecoming 2010 when four of my friends banged down my door, ruined my hangover nap, and commandeered my glass bong to watch the film release of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.)
Through these sorts of experiences, we can easily conflate attachment to the art itself with attachment to the artist. And in that conflation, there may be a felt responsibility to honor the person as much as the past they helped frame. But this kind of perceived relationship is a fabrication and delusion—until it isn’t. It is one thing to respect, admire, and be shaped by the art of a celebrity. It is another thing to assume closeness—be it trust, intimacy, shared values—where there is none.
For anyone of conscience, Ye is a cautionary tale against assuming closeness to celebrity. From espousing Nazism, to foregrounding ‘White Lives Matters’ as an affront to Black political formation, to reducing chattel slavery to a choice of the enslaved, Ye has chosen the laziest versions of rhetorical reversal and violence. Because, as Toni Morrison reminded us in her Nobel Lecture, “oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence.” Whether Ye’s choices were performance art, political declaration, or mania, doesn’t matter as much as the historical moment in which he enacted them. When we needed artists to pull inspiration out of the ether, Ye became a monstrosity in a MAGA hat – morally repugnant and tacky.
One could argue, even, that Ye recognizes this complication between artist-as-person and artist-as-business: a personal apology as a paid ad in a business publication like the Wall Street Journal seems telling. Could it be, for example, that the real target audience is other millionaires and billionaires—potential business partners that may have distanced themselves in recent years—and not his millions of working class fans who’d come to trust his voice and taste?
Where there is no true intimacy of being known by the other—as in this case—forgiveness must be understood not as a mending between the fan and the artist, but as the fan’s own self-evaluation. In other words, you actually cannot properly forgive Ye for repeated provocations of anti-Blackness and antisemitism in a way that invites mutual repair. Your private attachment and his public persona form an asymmetrical power dynamic. The grief you hold has nowhere to go. Because of this, you can never know to what degree any public apology is either earnest, or a spectacular manipulation of devoted followers. That paid ad was not for you. It was for everyone–and therefore, no one (maybe except Ye himself).
However, you can ask yourself if Ye is worthy of being admired unreservedly by you; or, if given his conceptual monstrosities, you must be released from some contrived devotion. All of that depends on how you see him and what you truly desire to see.
Neurological disorders can be unspeakably debilitating on their own. I can’t imagine, then, what it must be like coming to grips with a diagnosis like bipolar type-1 as one of the most recognizable people on the globe. Indeed, there’s a world in which both Ye’s offenses and his singular genius can be read through the lens of his suffering – as an extension of it. But that reading is one of distance, not devotion.
As for me – an admirer from the beginning – this is a sober proximity that fondly remembers a knock at the door on homecoming, but can never forget him crashout cosplaying as a Black white supremacist.
The miracle of forgiveness in this parasocial context is, in this case, that surprising moment when the memory is cherished, but the “relationship” has been released.
Go in Peace and Perspective,
Father Paul