Kanye West Tweets Encourage African-Americans To Become ‘Free Agents,’ Jason Whitlock Claims

Recent tweets from hip-hop star Kanye West about how he loves President Trump, likes the way conservative activist Candace Owens thinks, and that encourage an independent mindset when it comes to politics have prompted a firestorm of controversy and consumed huge amounts of bandwidth across social media in addition to immense coverage in the news media.

Kim Kardashian’s husband, whose opinions on issues have historically been all over the map, was also scolded by many of his erstwhile fans for claiming in a follow-up TMZ interview that slavery is a choice, after which he tried via Twitter to provide context for his remarks.

The same individuals who praised West when he accused George W. Bush of not caring about black people after Hurricane Katrina are denouncing him for “flippant and foolish” comments about slavery, Jason Whitlock writes in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed. But the hip-hop artist is conveying a more far-reaching message, the journalist implied.

Describing himself as a non-voting hardcore moderate who doesn’t like politics, the contrarian co-host of Speak For Yourself (where he does just that) on Fox Sports 1 claims that the rapper’s messaging nonetheless could have devastating effects on the Democratic Party in terms of voting patterns that have occurred in the last 50 or 60 years.

Whitlock explained in an essay headlined “Kanye had one of the best tweets of all time.”

“Liberalism is black people’s cigarette. In the immediate aftermath of the civil-rights movement, Democrats marketed liberalism to us as fashionable, sophisticated and liberating. Today it needs a surgeon general’s warning: hazardous to your family and the values you were taught as a child…The Democratic Party capitalized by promising black people government dependency disguised as assistance. The welfare check, the replacement for black fathers, is liberalism’s nicotine. Hollywood celebrities were once deployed by advertising companies to make smoking seem cool; today, they are deployed by liberal interest groups to make progressive politics seem like the only solution to black people’s problems.”

With Kanye West’s tweets in mind, Whitlock contended that the African-American constituency is the only demographic cohort that votes in a bloc manner. Instead, like other groups in the country, black voters should make both major political parties compete for their support along the lines of the political equivalent of free agents in the sports world.

“Since [Dr.] King’s death, liberalism has increasingly become our religion and the Democratic Party our church. The rewards for our allegiance are at best disappointing: Our families have disintegrated. Our men have been incarcerated and emasculated. Our communities have been abandoned by high achievers. And our children are confused and resentful of their elders…Major cities such as Baltimore and Detroit—run almost exclusively by black Democrats—remain crime-ridden and economically challenged, especially for black residents.”

Against that backdrop, Whitlock concluded that maybe it’s time for a change.

“Black people have no reason to fear political free agency.”

Regular viewers of SFY, which airs on weeknights from the Fox Los Angeles studios at 5 p.m. Eastern time on FS1, know that Whitlock is an outspoken critic of the NFL national anthem protests, which he has argued has been co-opted by the social justice movement and the virtue-signaling liberal sports media. A former Kansas City Star and Huffington Post columnist and Ball State University football player, Jason Whitlock rejoined Fox Sports after two tours of duty with ESPN.

In an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s FNC show tonight, Jason Whitlock pointed out that Kanye West probably disagrees with Trump and the Republican Party on many, if not most, issues, but what he classified as liberal groupthink is no longer providing all-purpose solutions to issues in the black community. He noted that Kanye West appears to be trying to suggest that people should merely be open to at least considering a new strategy, and West is creating the latitude for others to speak out in an equivalent manner.

Watch the interview embedded below and draw your own conclusions.