If Kyrie and Kanye are the best we can do, we are fukked
I'm not picking on you personally, I just grabbed the last post that illustrates my point.
Posts like these and others denying the power of these particular bm miss the point entirely. It's not that they're the most powerful bm of all, it's that they're the most powerful bm to break the rules publicly, thus requiring their masters to punish them publicly.
Somebody posted a Charleston White video (of all things) that explained it perfectly. It's an old plantation trick. In the wake of an attempted insurrection, all slaves on
that plantation, in
that town, in
that county, in
that state, possibly in
that region (see: more stringent slave codes throughout the SE post Nat Turner's rebellion), would be punished whether they participated or not. But the piece de resistance (sorry, no accents, I'm on my phone) was always the physical punishment of the most 'powerful' slaves involved.
What power could an enslaved man wield? Physical and social. Again, look at Nat Turner, he wielded socio- religious power as one of few black preachers.
The modern era isn't that different. A random bm making $500k has a sort of power, but in the realm of modern capitalism, can't accomplish much. But a bm with social power can, especially in the social media era.
So, yeah, within this framework, sadly, Kanye and Kyrie are the two (out of however many potentials) who
stumbled into insurrection and thus must be punished publicly.
pll.harvard.edu
