The 2016 election has been very strange. But perhaps the strangest development unfolded over the weekend — a burgeoning bromance between rapper Kanye West and Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson.
It started with a Vanity Fair interview of West, published September 24, about his second fashion collection. West repeated his intention, which he first announced at the MTV movie awards, to run for president in 2020. Then, unprompted, expressed his deep admiration for Carson. “As soon as I heard [Ben] Carson speak, I tried for three weeks to get on the phone with him. I was like this is the most brilliant guy,” West said.
It wouldn’t seem like West and Carson would have much in common. Carson is one of the most conservative candidates in a very conservative Republican field. He vehemently opposes gay rights, marijuana legalization, and Obamacare. He says the black community needs to “confront the entertainment industry” for glorifying violence and misogyny.
West is an iconoclastic rapper who sits atop the entertainment industry that Carson derides. In 2011, he visited the Occupy Wall Street protests as a sign of solidarity. Before the 2014 midterm elections he advised everyone, via Twitter, to support the Democratic ticket.
https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/529775458116595712
https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/529775530225065984
Recently West and his wife Kim Kardashian attended a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. They took a selfie.
I got my selfie!!! I really loved hearing her speak & hearing her goals for our country! #HillaryForPresident pic.twitter.com/zGpdcGSZBD
— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) August 7, 2015
So what does West see in Carson? The clue is when West said it started when he first “heard Carson speak.” Assuming that West isn’t a regular viewer of Fox & Friends, he likely first heard Carson speak at the first Republican presidential debate, held in early August.
Carson didn’t speak much at that debate. His most notable answer was on the subject of race:
I was asked by an NPR reporter once, why don’t I talk about race that often. I said it’s because I’m a neurosurgeon. And she thought that was a strange response. And you say — I said, you see, when I take someone to the operating room, I’m actually operating on the thing that makes them who they are. The skin doesn’t make them who they are. The hair doesn’t make them who they are. And it’s time for us to move beyond that. Because our strength as a nation comes in our unity. We are the United States of America, not the divided states. And those who want to divide us are trying to divide us, and we shouldn’t let them do it.
At first blush, this kind of post-racial argument would not appear to resonate with West. “George W. Bush doesn’t care about black people,” West famously said on live TV during a 2005 fundraiser for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
But since that time, however, West’s views on race appear to have evolved. In an interview with Clique TV earlier in March, West expressed views on race that matched Carson.
Racism is a dated concept. It’s, like, a silly concept that people try to touch on to either… to separate, to alienate, to pinpoint anything. It’s stupid. It’s like a bouncing ball in a room with two cats, when you don’t feel like playing with a cat. Let them literally fight over the bouncing ball. And the bouncing ball has nothing, no purpose, anything other than that it bounces. That’s racism. It’s not an actual thing that even means anything. You know — It’s something that was used to hold people back in the past. But now there’s been so many leaps and breaking of the rules that it’s, like, played out like a style from the 1800s or something. You know — the real true freedom isn’t in the words. The real true freedom is in the opportunity. And that’s what I’m saying.
Carson and West have connected over the phone and the admiration appears to be mutual. “I was extremely impressed with his business acumen,” Carson said in an interview with ABC News on Sunday. He suggested to West “the possibility of maybe himself and some of the other people in pop culture doing some music that might be uplifting that might give young women a sense of their value and young men a sense of responsibility.”
Could Carson support West for President? “Well, I am certainly willing to give him a chance,” Carson said.