What The Kanye Controversy Can Teach Us About Black Voters

It was a week into the bizarre, Red Pill Kanye West tour that the whole affair seemed to reach its zenith — or its nadir, depending on where you're sitting. Kanye completed his transmogrification into a sentient Reddit thread when he appeared on TMZ this week, parroting well-worn talking points about black-on-black crime and calling slavery in America "a choice." Van Lathan of TMZ was not having it.

Kanye West — rapper, music producer, clothing designer, provocateur of debatable guile — emerged from a period of relative quietude only to spend the last two weeks thrusting himself into our exhausting culture wars. He the alt-right-adjacent commentator Candace Owens. He reiterated his affection for President Trump, . He snapped a red-hat selfie. And for good measure, he wrote a verse that says that that black people were still on "." Kanye said that he was "free thinking," and that he had slipped