Decolonize beauty.

I’ve been saying that for a while now without ever diving into what I mean.

A thread. Colonization has two main components. Infiltration: Stripping away culture, self, indoctrinating the colonized; Appropriation: looting, pillaging the culture and treasure, commercializing and passing them off as their own while massively profiting at the expense of the colonized.

I was rooting for Kanye. But after seeing Kim’s “plea” today following years of her calling him a genius, and encouraging him running for president JUST two weeks ago, it’s time we call bullshit: Kanye does this every time he’s releasing new music.

Here are receipts.

THREAD 🧵 Late Registration - August 30, 2005

3 days later, Kanye West says “Bush doesn’t care about Black people” during a live telethon for hurricane Katrina. Woke Kanye? Nah. Clever Kanye. He becomes the talk of every household for weeks.

Late Registration sells 3.1 million copies.

There’s been a lot of talk especially of late about how Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party gave slaves their freedom in America.

They didn’t.

The slaves freed themselves.

THREAD, for this "Independence Day" There’s a reason Black Americans celebrate Juneteenth and not Jubilee, the day the Emancipation Proclamation became effective. Its bland words “thence forward and forever free” applied ONLY to territories beyond federal authority and EXEMPTED loyal states. It freed not one slave.

If you don’t want to hear about reparations for slavery in America, you are NOT an ally. There’s no price on human life but Germany paid billions in reparations for not only killing 6M Jews during the Shoah (Holocaust), but also enslaving another 20M and working them to death. Germany paid not just Israel but individuals, $1 Billion as recently as 2013 for the care of all elderly Holocaust survivors.

Instead of trying to pretend it never happened like America is doing to slavery/racism here, they recognize and continue to work to atone for their sins.

When I was buying my house, it blew my mind when my lender asked if my family couldn’t just gift me the down payment money, saying that gifts/loans of $50k to $100k weren’t uncommon from families of first-time homebuyers. That’s the 400-year head start we don’t have. I said what I said. And it’s true. Your reality may be different but don’t be willfully ignorant at the fact that Black people 9.9 times out of 10 don’t have the luxury to call a family member for ANY SIZE GIFT to purchase a home because of the racial wealth gap.