Applaud Kanye West For Wearing The Confederate Flag
Zachary Schwartz
Hip-hop has always been about flipping others’ work and making it your own, and Kanye West is the God of that. He sped up Blues samples to make his signature chipmunk-soul sound, he took the kilt from the ancient Scottish kings, he sampled Nina Simone's “Strange Fruit” to make his own song about “second-string bitches.” As he’s gained more credibility in his career, he's moved on to borrowing from even more culturally sacred icons, for example the Jesus imagery throughout Yeezus. Now, he’s not even touching something considered “good,” he’s repurposing “bad" imagery to make an artistic and social statement. Really, really bad imagery.

For those of you who haven’t heard, Kanye has started using the Confederate flag as the primary design on his tour merchandise for Yeezus. So, already, that ignites a gut reaction in so many of us who grew up understanding that the Confederate flag was a symbol of racism, slavery, and discrimination. I mean, that was my first reaction. But let’s hear what Ye has to say about it:

“React how you want. Like I said, any energy you got is good energy. You know, the Confederate flag represented slavery, in a way—that’s my abstract take on what I know about it, right? So I made the song ‘New Slaves.’ So I took the Confederate Flag and made it my flag. It’s my flag now! Now what are you gonna do?”

Kanye West knows what he’s doing. He’s being like, “ha ha, I made it mine.” He’s being like, “ha ha, I’m making money off this too.” If he continues with this, a whole generation of kids is going to grow up associating the Confederate flag with Kanye West and less with the South. If he continues with this, white racists aren’t going to be able to use the symbol anymore. He’s spoiling it for them.

I’ve thought about the Confederate flag before—aesthetically, it’s an interesting design. Obviously, everything it stood for up to this point was fucked. But designs are designs, they can be repurposed. The swastika used to stand for something good in the Eastern religions, then the Nazis made it stand for something bad. The Confederate flag used to stand for something bad, now Kanye West is making it stand for something badass.

A side note: look at the American flag. The American flag stands for slavery, too, and for the genocide of the Native Americans. It also stands for freedom of speech. Symbols are symbols, generations come along and repurpose them for their own uses. “Skinhead” used to mean white racist person, then Kanye made a hugely popular song called “Black Skinhead.” Now, if you say “skinhead” to a lot of young people they’ll think, Kanye West, and the messages of Yeezus. Which shows, words and symbols, they can be flipped into something better or something worse.

Kanye West, in the past, has identified himself as in the tradition of activist artists such as Gil Scott-Heron. So this is Kanye’s activism. In the past, activists had to fight institutionalized racism, laws that explicitly promoted racial discrimination. Some of those still exist, like stop-and-frisk, and there are people who are working to combat those laws. But Kanye West fights on a different front. In addition to law-based racism, there is also cultural racism. Cultural racism is more significant, because it’s not what the government thinks, it’s what the people think.

But culture is vast and hard to change, like a large blob; you can only really change it within the culture itself. You need the producers: the musicians, the writers, the filmmakers, to influence the consumers, everyone else. The War On Marijuana was lost not because of lobbyists trying to change laws but because weed became accepted in music, film, and literature. People are more okay with homosexuality because of films like “Brokeback Mountain,” singers like Frank Ocean, and players like Jason Collins. Laws don’t change people; culture changes people.

Kanye West is that, cultural agent. To an extent, he is the culture. He’s the tastemaker of the decade: the man of the shutter glasses, Air Yeezys, chipmunk-soul, kilt, operatic hip-hop sound, and more. Kanye doesn’t fight racism by signing petitions and lobbying politicians; he uses music, words, and now fashion to influence kids everywhere.

With his repurposing of the Confederate flag, it’d be like, taking and displaying the enemy’s flag for a war you’re already winning. The enemy, at the very least, would get confused. And they would talk amongst themselves: should they fly that flag anymore? Why is the other side doing this? What’s going on?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Kanye West is a fucking genius. He's not afraid to sacrifice his image for something he believes in, which so many artists today are scared to do. He could have made a more mainstream album that would have sold better than Yeezus, but he didn't. He could just not wear the Confederate flag and avoid all this bad press, but he does it anyways, because he's trying to make a statement.
You can agree or disagree with use of the flag, but at least he's prompting a dialogue: getting people to talk about what it means, whether it’s okay or not to wear, which is more than most high school or college history professors are able to do. Like he did musically with Yeezus, he’s forcing you to have an opinion, which is what great art does.

Look, no one’s going to forget what the Confederate flag originally stood for, and no one should. But think about it: he’s co-opting it and making it a symbol of Kanye West, the man the revolutionary. I don't think I would ever wear a Confederate flag, but it's awesome that he is. In an age where people sometimes like to pretend that racism is dead just because we have a black President, among other reasons, Kanye West forces people to think about it with songs like "New Slaves" and fashion statements like this. Like he said, any energy is good energy. Whether your opinion is for or against his use of the Confederate flag, at least you have one—and that's what matters.

ZACH TWO TIMES is a column by Zach Schwartz about rap music, literature, drugs, art, and life in general. You can follow Zach on Twitter @zach_two_times and read his website at http://zachtwotimes.blogspot.com

Previously: Lean, Gucci Mane, And Me
Write the lyrics for a misc song made in 2013, titled "Applaud Kanye West For Wearing The Confederate Flag", by artist "Zachary Schwartz".