Kanye West's recent slavery comments will be remembered forever the same way we can clearly remember when he interrupted Taylor Swift's 2009 MTV VMA speech, declaring Beyonce had the better video. "When you hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years?!" Kanye said in the TMZ office yesterday, "that sounds like a choice."
TMZ got Black Lives Matter activist, DeRay Mckesson, on the line to sound off on the seemingly unfactual comments by Ye. "The only thing I can think of when he said that 'slavery was a choice'...[is that it's] choice of white people. It was a choice for white people to not let [Black] people read, to put people in cages to take their children from them and to extend that for centuries, that was a choice," DeRay says.
He further explains how Kanye is participating in this logic that is blaming Black people for being oppressed, and people know that he's acting out. As for advice to Kanye, DeRay says this: "Slow down, find a place where you can learn and read and be in a place where your ideas are also challenged and you can push on other peoples ideas - which I don't think for you, right now, is the public space. You need some time to reflect and learn more."
Watch the full video below.