Kanye West revisits his comments against homophobia

While I'm not a big fan of his, I do like a lot of his views. Kanye's views were molded by a childhood that is very atypical for a hiphop artist. For one thing, his mother was the Chair of the English Dept at Chicago State Univ. He attended art school and then college before dropping out. Study upon study have shown that education level correlates negatively with homophobia (and support for Bush!). That is, the more educated one is. the less homophobic s/he is likely to be. Post-grads are the least homophobic. I'm sure that Kanye's relatively educated status gave him the critical thinking necessary to rise above the homophobia in hiphop.

Just as important was having a gay cousin. I place them at equal importance because a lesser man would have simply shunned the cousin. He needed the intelligence and introspection to see the errors of his ways. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia:

On August 22, 2005, the MTV special All Eyes On Kanye West aired, in which West spoke out against homophobia in hip-hop, claiming that hip-hop has always been about "speaking your mind and about breaking down barriers, but everyone in hip-hop discriminates against gay people". He then reflected on a personal experience. He said that he had a "turning point" when he realized one of his cousins was gay. He said regarding this experience: "This is my cousin. I love him and I've been discriminating against gays." He went on to say that "not just hip-hop, but America just discriminates against gay people ... I wanna just come on TV, and just tell my rappers, just tell my friends, 'Yo, stop it'". He also drew comparison between African Americans' struggle for civil rights and today's gay rights movement. The following year, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, West further expounded his experiences with and views on the relationship between the black and gay communities:

I think in the daily life of a black male, we gay-bash way more than we disrespect women. We would call a gay guy a fag to his face. But if we walked up to a woman and said Aiight, bitch! we would know that was disrespectful. I remember five years ago I was in this clothing store in Greenwich Village with my old girlfriend. I said the word "fag" kind of loud and there were some gay dudes in the store. My girlfriend was like, Yo, c'mon, step into the new millennium. Well, my level of consciousness has since raised. And I actually think that standing up for gays was even more crazy than bad-mouthing the president. In the black community, someone could label you gay and bring your career down. But that was me showing what black people are really about today, or at least what we need to be about.