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Kanye West has been in the news for everything but music lately. Once considered a music mogul and rap genius, the man has spewed anti-Black and antisemitic comments in every direction, casually insulted his own children, and uncorked some decidedly shady business deals. West’s struggle with his bipolar disorder has been very public, and, aside from a short hospitalization in 2016, he appears to have refused treatment. He is loud and proud about his mental health issues, even marking the cover art for his album Ye with the words “I hate being bipolar. It’s awesome.”
Similarly, Herschel Walker, ostensibly running to represent the state of Georgia in the U.S. Senate, has failed to wow voters with his political or policy chops. Instead, the Walker campaign focuses on the damage control that his innumerable missteps and questionable statements require. Many speculate that he suffers from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated trauma to the head that many football players have suffered.
A recent Rolling Stone article, “With Herschel Walker, the Stupidity Is the Point,” lays out that Walker is a pawn in a Republican endgame to persuade voters that shepherding a cartoonish candidate into the Senate ensures that the GOP will keep its grip on political power. Whether Walker suffers from CTE or something else, his GOP colleagues will never implore him to seek help or treatment. A proactively healthy candidate would ruin all of their plans to subject us all to their strategy.
West and Walker have fallen into the age-old trap that Uncle Toms and house Negroes of eras gone by did: They sell out their own people to gain the approval of white people. It is an all too familiar malady for African Americans. There will always be Black people who bend over backwards to get into cahoots with powerful whites, regardless of how it plays out for their own people.
But when mental health comes into play, this game becomes far more insidious. The white people who support and uphold West and Walker care nothing about their mental health. In fact, their struggles make them more pliable.
The West-Walker conundrum is not just about having powerful allies across the racial barrier. They recognize that white people have power and wealth that is unfathomable to most Black people—and West and Walker, Black people who are willing to play the fool for white benefit, now see that the stakes are ever higher. What has become more important than earning the approval of certain white people is paving a pathway to wealth.
So they do the bidding of white people. West prints “White Lives Matter” T-shirts, hoping to profit from racial animosity and signal his desire to do anything to buttress the white power structure. Walker parrots Republican talking points without doing any critical thinking, knowing that is the task that he has been assigned.
West’s approach to fame has always been contrarian. “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” is still an iconic phrase, years after he uttered it. His marriage to Kim Kardashian, monetizing a bipolar disorder diagnosis, and his manufactured reverence of Christianity were all about doing what no one expected and embracing it without remorse.
The white people who support and uphold West and Walker care nothing about their mental health.
No one should be ashamed of their mental health struggles. But West’s behavior and his apparent refusal to listen to anyone but the white yes-men behind these public displays may indicate that the disease remains untreated. So his behavior goes unchecked.
To be sure, plenty of people enjoy watching a successful Black billionaire melt down and destroy the empire he built to become one of the most respected businessmen in the rap industry. And there is a sizable group of people that relish the division West’s behavior has sown among Black people and other people of color.
Meanwhile, Walker’s in with the Trump wing of the GOP means he has not had to answer for anything. Not the abortions he has allegedly persuaded two different women to have, not the abuse his former girlfriends have accused him of, and certainly none of his nonsensical ramblings.
Many people attempt to balance holding West and Walker accountable with showing some graciousness about their struggles. More than anything else, these displays are sad to see and exhausting. But it is impossible to find balance in situations that are designed to create safe havens from responsibility. The users and the used secure more power and greater infamy no matter what happens. As long as these men are useful idiots, they will always fail upwards.
That is why both Walker and West are so important to antisemites and racists. They are both completely unhinged and unpredictable, but their behavior and their fame breathe new life into American racism. As long as they are plied with attention and money, and protected from responsibility for their actions, the bidding of powerful white supremacists will be done and the shock factor will never wear off.
