Yeah right: Kanye thought Bush was bad. Do you remember the now infamous video of Kanye West, in Sept. 2, 2005, just four days after Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans, West gathered with celebrities Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes and Lindsay Lohan for "A Concert for Hurricane Relief," televised on NBC, which raised a reported $50 million, according to Slate. Kanye, frustrated by the government's failure to help the hurricane's victims, looked straight into a camera and said on live TV, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."
14 years later, I realize two things from that situation:
1. That was the beginning of the personal challenges that Kanye faces today and should really be a bigger conversation about mental health which I will save for a later date but doesn't mean he was wrong.
2. 14 years makes a big difference
Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina may not have been expeditious but it was clear to me it was most likely due to an indifference to the suffering that was ongoing. Mostly because he could not relate rather than a deliberate attempt to cause one group of people pain. Or it could just have been inefficiencies within the governmental sectors.
Which is why it is ironic that Kanye allowed himself to be used by someone who is quite clearly trying to hurt a specific group of people and enact policies that affect that group: Donald Trump. Since he descended from the heights of Trump tower to assume his role as President of the United States (POTUS), Donald Trump has quite literally been the master of deceit, diversion and division. He has been letting us know the ethics groups he found to be less than sub par in his measure of humanity.
This culminated for me in his proud assertion that he would be happy to take up the mantle to shut down the government. Why do I think this is? Well, in his mind I believe Trump feels that most government jobs which we know are jobs for life and reliant on the government are held by ethnic groups when in reality of 35% of government workers are from an "ethnic background". The federal workforce is 18.1 percent Black, 8.4 percent Hispanic, 5.6 percent Asian, 0.4 percent Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 1.7 percent American Indian/Alaska Native, 1.2 percent Non-Hispanic/Multi-Racial, and 64.7 percent White, so minorities as a whole constituted 35.3 percent of the Federal Workforce.
Furthermore those who "drain" government resources and benefit from government programs are from an ethnic background and or from countries in need of government aid. The census show that at 41.6 percent, blacks were more likely to participate in government assistance programs in an average month.
The black participation rate was followed by Hispanics at 36.4 percent, Asians or Pacific Islanders at 17.8 percent, and non-Hispanic whites at 13.2 percent.
But what Trump doesn't realize and is disconnected from is why these groups need government assistance. Not everyone was born with a silver spoon in their mouth and faked their way to wealth.
Trump completely missed the point. Slavery and Jim Crow practices have created generational disparities the effects of which are still to come.