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*“Roots” actor and “Reading Rainbow” host LeVar Burton has a few choice words for Kanye ‘Sunken Place’ West and the rapper’s controversial slave comments from his TMZ interview, in which ‘Ye proclaimed:
“When you hear about slavery for 400 years … For 400 years? That sounds like a choice. … You were there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all. It’s like we’re mentally imprisoned.”
Vox.com also pointed out the various contradictory statements Kanye made about Harriet Tubman, in the midst of defending Donald Trump and his slavery statements:
West tweeted, “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves,” implying that Tubman too believed many slaves were simply making the decision to stay in bondage.
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Just a day later, West told radio personality Charlamagne Tha God that he started using the cryptocurrency Bitcoin “when I saw Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. It’s like when you see all the slave movies, it’s like why you gotta keep reminding us about slavery? Why don’t you put Michael Jordan on the $20 bill?”
Now, Mr. Burton has spoken out in an interview with KTLA 5 News, expressing not only that he thinks Kanye’s’s statements are “stupid,” but also that he’s deeply concerned about his mental health.
LeVar Burton: “Where do you start with Kanye? You know what? I genuinely believe that this young man has brain chemistry issues and that he is in a hypo-manic phase. I’m not a psychologist, I’m not a psychiatrist, but I’ve seen this behavior and I know it fairly intimately well. I just think that somebody in Kanye’s camp -if there is somebody in Kanye’s camp- needs to put their arms around him and have him sit the hell down for five minutes, until his brain chemistry levels out, because he’s NOT helping himself right now.
When Kanye West says that slavery was a choice, I’ve got an ISSUE with that. It’s irresponsible, it is uneducated, it’s just stupid.”
And Russell Simmons agrees with Burton in that Kanye may be suffering through a mental disturbance. Check out his IG post below:
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