From College Dropout to the White House: is 2020 the year of President West?

Kanye West has officially announced that he is running for President of the United States. In a tweet on July 4, West said: “We must now realise the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision and building our future. I am running for president of the United States! #2020VISION”. Many believe the announcement may just be a stunt to promote his new album, but what if it isn’t? The rapper has long spoken about his desire to run for president, so could it be a sincere move? Could the shock result of the 2016 election be trumped by a 2020 presidential victory for Kanye West?

If you delve a little deeper, the idea may not be as bizarre as it first appears. West has a huge public following, and his brand name offers the kind of instant identity most politicians would kill for. President Trump has proven that a lack of previous political experience is no barrier to being elected to the highest office in the nation. West is also known for some controversial statements and rants but, given the current presidential slate, that certainly doesn’t disqualify him. As American voters are faced with the erratic Trump and the senile Joe Biden, Kanye West could genuinely be the most lucid candidate on the stage.

 This next election is going to be fought on cultural grounds. The Black Lives Matter protests and the ensuing attempts to essentially dismantle American history and culture have led to an angry atmosphere across the political divide. A cultural figure like West could be the perfect person to help bridge the gap, particularly as he comes from a different ideological standpoint to most commentators.

“People expect that if you’re black, you have to be Democrat”

The rapper’s music has often displayed an awareness of racism. His 2004 album College Dropout saw West rap about his grandfather’s arrest after he took West’s mother to a whites-only counter in Chicago. Referring to voter discrimination, he raps: “Racism still alive we just be concealing it”. Two other tracks, ‘Two Words’ and ‘Jesus Walks’, make reference to police brutality. In the latter, he raps: “Getting choked by detectives, yeah, yeah, now check the method/They be askin’ us questions, harass and arrest us”.

In 2005, Late Registration touched on the ways black populations are exploited, from the self-explanatory ‘Diamonds from Sierra Leone’ to ‘Crack Music’: “How we stop the Black Panthers?/Ronald Reagan cooked up an answer”. Perhaps his most damning indictment of US society comes on 2010’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy – on ‘Power’, he raps: “The system broken, the school is closed, the prison’s open”.

Despite this, the rapper has an interesting relationship with US racial politics. His latest track, ‘Wash Us In The Blood’, is a blistering piece of music that points to the legacy of slavery, and the debilitating effect of mass incarceration on black communities. It’s a focused, effective song that calls for the Biblical deliverance of black America from centuries of evil. It has been praised as a piece that is a perfect reflection of the contemporary situation in America.

At the same time, however, he has criticised racial activists for tending to focus on the sins of the past rather than the future of black empowerment. In a 2018 interview with Charlamagne Tha God, he said: “We definitely are dealing with racism, but I want to push future concepts… It’s like, when you just see, like, all the slave movies. It’s, like, why you gotta keep reminding us about slavery? Why don’t you show us, put Michael Jordan on a $20 dollar bill?”

Up until a recent interview with Forbes, in which he officially shunned his MAGA hat, West has expressed open support for President Trump, who he argued represented a positive change for the black community. He said that something needed to change in the makeup of US governance, or else there would be a stall in racial advances in America – he praised Trump for bringing the black unemployment rate to a record low. Last year, at an event in November, West said that he would build on this success in a hypothetical 2024 run, using employment as a means to further racial equality.

The couple have used their power to get Trump to commute the sentences of a number of people languishing in prison on decades-old charges

In a meeting at the White House in October 2018, West rallied against the idea that his black identity should mean he supports the Democrats: “People expect that if you’re black, you have to be Democrat. I have a – I’ve had conversations that basically said that welfare is the reason why a lot of black people end up being Democrat. They say – you know, first of all, it’s a limited amount of jobs. So the fathers lose the jobs, and they say, ‘We’ll give you more money for having more kids in your home’. And then, we got rid of the mental health institute in the 80s and the 90s, and the prison rates just shot up”. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, he famously said that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people”, although he later backtracked and claimed his views were coming from a left-wing “victimised mentality”.

West certainly has the cultural clout to help bridge certain racial and religious divides, but what are his policy positions? He’s mused about running “the Trump campaign and maybe the Bernie Sanders principles”, suggesting he would cut through the middle of the political divide, connecting with people and arguing that he will reshape America for the better. We’ve previously seen that he (along with his wife Kim Kardashian) is a passionate advocate of prison reform – the couple have used their power to get Trump to commute the sentences of a number of people languishing in prison on decades-old charges. He also donated $1 million to reform charities, suggesting that it would be a big part of his platform.

The Forbes interview spelt out a few more presidential aspirations, including running the USA like the fictional nation of Wakanda. West wants to end police brutality, and he said that he is against the death penalty. He wants to “clean up the chemicals – in our deodorant, in our toothpaste”, and he shares a similar suspicion of a coronavirus vaccine. Asked about abortion, he said he is “pro-life because I’m following the word of the Bible”. He also revealed that he hadn’t yet developed a foreign policy – although he expressed a love for China – or a tax policy. When quizzed on this, he said: “I don’t know if I would use the word ‘policy’ for the way I would approach things”.

America is a country battling huge divisions, and there’s little sign that this will change

So, will we see a shock Kanye West election in November? The answer is probably not. The deadline to get on the official ballot has essentially passed, and there’s no sign of the field operation that a candidate needs. He could push to be an independent, to secure the backing of a smaller party or orchestrate a massive write-in campaign, but none of these will win the vote. His touted ‘Birthday Party’ is pretty much a non-starter. US politics is a two-party system, so the next president will belong to the Democrats or the Republicans. It’s a shame that the system offers little way in for outsiders, but that’s just how things are.

America is a country battling huge divisions, and there’s little sign that this will change, no matter who wins in November. It’s unlikely to be Kanye West, but a sincere and centre-ground run for the White House could prove an unusual unifying move in these hugely polarised times.