Seeing as it's all the rest of the Internet wants to talk about,
let's talk about Kanye West for a minute, shall we? If you have been alive in
the last 48 hours, you've probably heard that Kanye West had a concert in
Sydney Australia the other night. What's so special about this concert, you may
ask: in mid-performance Kanye told the crowd that he needed everyone to stand
up in order for him to perform his next song. When he saw two people in the
crowd were not standing up, he stopped the performance and demanded that they
stood. It was soon discovered that the two people Kanye had chosen to single
out were wheelchair users, and therefore could not stand up on his request.
Effectively Kanye had stopped a concert to yell at a kid in the wheelchair for
not standing up. Bad Kanye, bad! Right? I I'm not so sure...
Let me back up for second. Do I like Kanye West? No. Do I
think Kanye West is a good person? Not particularly, no. Do I do any respect
for Kanye West whatsoever? Nope, I can’t say that I do. But, do I think
that he is a horrible human for yelling at a kid in a wheelchair to stand up?
No. Let me explain.
As most of you know, and as I hope the name of my blog would
imply, I am in a wheelchair, and I have been in one all my life. Growing
up, I can honestly say, the greatest personal insults anyone could ever give me
was to give me a double standard. Obviously, my being asked to stand up, or
climb a rope in gym class, just wasn’t going to happen. I'm not talking about
the physical double standard. I'm talking about one on a much more personal
level. When someone completely changes who they are or what they expect from me
because I am sitting in a wheelchair, that is insulting. Example: The
teacher who is known as the biggest hard ass in school yells at the entire
class, demanding that they do better, then turns to me and tells me in a
much lower, softer, kinder voice, "you are doing an awesome job! Keep it
up." If I have been doing the exact same thing the other kids in the class
have been doing (which was true more often than not) then that little
conversation hurts more than an actual slap in the face.
There is nothing more patronizing than someone who changes
everything about them, their expectations, their personality, their
communication style for me, and only me. It hurts, because they might as well
be saying, "because you are in that chair, you obviously can't handle the
real me, so hang on one second, let me dumb it down a little
bit."
Back to the whole Kanye situation: He's a jerk. He's a jerk to
everyone. He thinks that everyone should stand up when he says so, because
that's who he is. He thinks that the world revolves around him, and he has
thought that for a very long time. He's a jerk, and you know what? He was a
jerk to those people in wheelchairs too. I know that I might be stepping on
rocky ground here (yes, pun intended), I know that I wasn't the person in that
situation, and I might feel differently if I was, but to me that's a
compliment. I know that it was in no way intended as one, but he didn't stop
and change who he was because of the wheelchairs. He yelled about it, and then
when he realized why they weren't standing, he continued on with his business
being his usual jerky self while standing on top of the world. He didn't stop and
talk to them in a different tone, he didn't apologize, he moved on.
Kanye West is a jerk, and he didn't "dumb it
down" when he realized these people were in wheelchairs. I don't like him,
what he did, or the way he carries himself, but I like that. All this being
said, I have a question: Are we mad at him because he demanded for everyone to
stand up? Or, are we mad at him because he treated some kids in wheelchairs the
way he treats everyone else? Because let's be real here, he shouldn't have
demanded for anyone to stand up. But if he had, and he had stopped the concert
because two able-bodied people hadn't stood, this wouldn't have gone viral, and
I wouldn't be talking about it right now. Why is that?
