words.
"The BBC interview was personal and honest and heartfelt, but it was also frenetic and boastful and rambling at times—perfect fodder for late night TV, in other words. Kimmel mocked it by reproducing the interview with a black kid in place of West. When West took offense, and let loose a series of furious tweets, Kimmel gave the smirk of a comedian who couldn't see the big deal. You know the one; it climbs up only one side of the face, its meaning being: It was just a joke. That Kanye West didn't take it as a joke isn't really a surprise, even if we ignore the fact that he's famously self-serious. Here he'd done an interview explaining how hurtful it is to have proved one's ability and still be seen as inferior by rich white people, and a rich white person responded by infantilizing him.
Was Jimmy Kimmel intentionally trying to humiliate Kanye West by treating him, literally, as a boy, a slur that still holds a lot of power in the black community? Probably not.
...I believe there are numerous valid reasons to criticize Kanye West, but his rant on Jimmy Kimmel Live is not one of them. You may think he sounded crazy, but it wasn't a kind of crazy that was foreign to me—or, I'd assume, millions of other Americans. It was the crazy that comes from being stared at for daring to look different while eating breakfast with your mom. It was the crazy that comes from never knowing if you deserved to be kicked out of that bar. It was the crazy that comes from being the one person stopped by a cop amidst a sea of white people. "This is racist," you might say to the cop. "Prove it," he might say back. And at that moment, you can't."
GAWKER: Kanye West Knows You Think He Sounded Nuts on Kimmel
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