I no longer miss the "old" Kanye West, now known as Ye. I'm tired of hearing about the new Ye, and I wish we could stop talking about him altogether. Many of you are probably in the same boat, especially about the latter.
But we can't, because he remains one of the most influential people in the world, and he's using that power to spread hatred and division. It would be irresponsible not to call it out.
Last Sunday, Ye said on Twitter, a platform on which he has twice as many followers as there are Jews in the world, that he would go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.” It's important to note that despite being only 2% of the U.S. population, Jews are the targets of nearly 60% of religious bias crimes.
In response, Twitter locked him out of his account. It's a move that came shortly after an anti-Jewish post from the rapper on Instagram caused that account to be restricted.
Days before that, he appeared with far-right pundit Candace Owens flaunting “White Lives Matter” T-shirts during Paris Fashion Week. Ye later told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that he thought wearing the shirt was "funny." According to the Anti-Defamation League, "White Lives Matter" is a "white supremacist phrase" that's popular with the Aryan Renaissance Society, the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups.
It should be clear to anyone that the Ye, who once said that "George Bush doesn't care about Black people" on national TV over the former president's disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, is no more. As a former fan, I have to accept that as a fact.
And I wish others who once loved him for being a cultural trendsetter in music, fashion and even in self-confidence would do the same. This includes to stop asking for the "old Kanye" back. Doing so skates dangerously close to absolving him of his harmful behavior in the present.