KANYE WEST ON SLAVERY IS BASICALLY TONY ROBBINS ON #METOO

I'm a little late to the most recent Kanye West controversy, though I see that #IfSlaveryWereAChoice is trending on Twitter. West said this in a TMZ interview:

When you hear about slavery for 400 years ... for 400 years? That sounds like a choice. Like, you was there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all? It’s like we’re mentally in prison.

What did he mean by that? I think he meant what thick-necked self-help guru Tony Robbins meant when he denigrated supporters of the #MeToo movement at a public appearance in March:

Robbins ... said at an event on March 15, that some people were misusing the #MeToo hashtag. "I'm not knocking the #MeToo movement; I'm knocking victimhood," he said. "If you use the #MeToo movement to try to get significance, and certainty by attacking or destroying someone else, you haven't grown an ounce."

Kanye is a black man, but he's also a rich, successful male egomaniac, and like a lot of rich, successful male egomaniacs, he seems to believe that non-rich, not-successful people's problems would magically vanish if they'd just develop a positive mental attitude. Belief in the transformative power of positive thinking has been an American religion for generations. Robbins is obviously one of its best-known preachers, but West sounds like an acolyte as well.

In West's remarks there's a strain of the Bill Cosby pull-your-pants-up black cultural conservatism that Ta-Nehisi Coates has written about at length, but I also see New Age self-help thinking in it, along with a touch of Nietzsche as interpreted by Reddit-posting basement-dwellers. It's all very American: I'm rich, therefore you just need to perform Jedi mind tricks on yourself and the impediments in your life will magically disappear, too. Hey, at least West isn't a Scientologist (yet).

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UPDATE, THURSDAY: Did I said Tony Robbins? Would it surprise you at all if Robbins had tweeted this?

Free thinkers don't fear retaliation for your thoughts. The traditional thinkers are only using thoughts and words but they are in a mental prison. You are free. You've already won. Feel energized. Move in love not fear. Be afraid of nothing.

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 25, 2018

(Hat tip: Gary Legum.)