Is Kanye Our Generation's Muhammad Ali?

Ok, so admittedly the post title is an exaggeration, but Kanye's making headlines again and it got me thinking (and I'm not the only one). Apparently, at the MTV VMAs when country artist Taylor Swift was giving her acceptance speech for Best Female Video of the Year, Kanye got up on stage, took the mic and in no uncertain terms said Beyonce had the best video of all time (ergo, Taylor, you shouldn't have won that shit). The audience booed, Taylor looked stunned, and later Beyonce made a conciliatory move and invited Taylor back on stage to give a real acceptance speech.

MTV Shows

This marks only the latest occasion in a long series of public, er, shall we say gaffs that Kanye seems quite good at making, and which cause an uproar in the blogosphere and entertainment news world as a chorus of voices chime in on what a nutcase Kanye is, how selfish and immature he is, how he ain't got no sense...on and on it goes.

Now, my point here is not to deny that Kanye does often come off as an arrogant and immature dude, with an inability to see beyond himself. At best, the Muhammad Ali connection is a stretch. Ali had arrogance and ego galore, but he was also emblematic of a social and political moment and the strength and pride of a generation that stood up to Jim Crow, organized in schools, communities and workplaces, and raised the call for Black Power. The historical context, the social movements, the personal biography, even his own political associations, all make Muhammad Ali a very different figure than Kanye West.

But, there's gotta be more to Kanye's repeated abrasive interventions besides ego or insanity. He's a person of color in the public eye, in an industry that is reflective of and reinforces white supremacy and patriarchy in society (from the images and artists it promotes, to the money it exploits out of their artistic production, etc.).

In what seem like countless outbursts on stages and at shows, the recurrent underlying theme has been Kanye's sense that he is fighting for an "underdog" -- whether himself, someone else, or a group of people -- who is hard-working, talented, deserving of more, and constantly being held back and exploited by an elite social and political class. He doesn't hesitate to call people out when he thinks they're getting over, even if it's unpopular or seems rude. In its finer moments, that kind of sentiment can take on a collective character, like when Kanye said "George Bush doesn't care about black people" in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. At it's worst, it remains individualistic and atomized, all about Kanye and what he shoulda won.

In a contradictory way, Kanye has elements of what made Ali so great, but he's not able to overcome his own limitations because of the current historical moment we live in. Kanye's arrogance, his braggadocio, his loud-mouth interventions are scattered pieces of an anti-racist sentiment that historically has been a rallying cry for people of color to reclaim what is rightfully ours.

Whether we think Kanye is right or wrong for his actions, there's no getting around the relationship of personality to social context; the relationship of our own strengths and weaknesses to how these are shaped and developed by the activity of the communities around us. Kanye's loud mouth might get him in trouble in a school classroom (or an awards show), but it comes in handy on a picket line. Or, as CLR James wrote in his book on the Haitian Revolution, "Great [humans] make history, but only such history as it is possible for them to make."