Kanye West did not make any friends on “Black Twitter” when he claimed that slavery was a choice, but thankfully, the alt-right was there to make him feel loved. During an interview with TMZ, the topic casually turned to the topic of slavery, to which Kanye didn’t hesitate to speak his mind. “When you hear about slavery for 400 years, for 400 years? That sounds like a choice,” the rapper explained. “Like, you were there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all?”
“Slavery is a choice”-Kanye
Remember this line?
“Give me liberty or give me death.”
That’s why it’s a choice. Choose to fight to the death and you won’t be a slave. Ever.
pic.twitter.com/atqFG6Tw4E— FULLTEAKAVANAUGH (@rektredpill) May 1, 2018
Immediately, Kanye garnered plenty of side-eyes from all over the internet. Support for the rapper was in short supply until members of the alt-right community started to speak up. One outlet that ran with support for Kanye’s remark was 4Chan, where one user wrote: “This is a HUUUGE redpill, and I’m not even big on the whole Kanye thing.” In internet speak, “redpill” is a term used to describe converting an individual to alt-right beliefs.
More affluent people in the community, such as “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams, didn’t hesitate to take Kanye’s side. “How many of you hear Kanye say slavery was a choice? How many of you heard that?” Adams asked in a video he made. “That’s not what he’s trying to say. He’s talking about the talking about it. He’s saying people have been talking about slavery for 400 years.”
Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson also spoke up in support of Kanye, claiming “Kanye was obviously talking about black people being mired in the mindset of slavery being a choice, not that slaves 400 years ago had a choice.”
It's funny, I think that most intellectual black folks, & other people, totally get what @kanyewest was saying, about slavery is a choice! Slavery is about a mentality, control over the Mind! Why is it that we get it, but others are twisting it into something else? #kanyewest
— MMTCHICK (@Mrsmmtbeauty) May 1, 2018
The issue with Adams’ and Watsons’ interpretations, however, is that Kanye went ahead and clarified his statement. He took to Twitter shortly after the TMZ interview and wrote “To make myself clear. 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.”