This week our Karen is Kanye West. You know why unless you’ve been living under a rock. His brazen anti-Semitic comments has sent his life into a spiral, and he deserves all of it. Mind you, he has had EVERY opportunity to apologize. In this day and age, hate speech like his cannot, and will not be tolerated in the media or anywhere. It’s rare that someone of his caliber would even proudly go off like that. And it’s dangerous, because it emboldens others since Ye has credibility. The very few that agree, feel like they can come out, and they did in Los Angeles when they put up sign on the freeway that read “Kanye was right.” He’s NOT.
Since West doubled down, he has begun to lose everything including his talent agency, CAA, his relationship with Adidas, the Gap is removing all of his products from their stores, players that are a part of his Donda Sports have stepped out, and the list goes on. Celebs like Lizzo, Jamie Lee Curtis, David Schwimmer, and Khloe Kardashian have all made it clear that Kanye’s behavior is wrong and he will not be supported. Schwimmer hit hard with this stat, “Jews make up only 2.4% of the population of the United States but are the victims of more than 60% of all religious hate crimes.” Think about that. West’s social media following, is larger than the amount of the Jewish population worldwide. He has influence. There’s proof that hate speech leads to hate crimes. He needs to remember that with great power comes great responsibility. And we need to remember that silence is complicity.