Ethical Consumerism and the Dilemma of Kanye West

by Carson Duncan

After Kanye West fell asleep at the wheel of his Lexus rental and careened into oncoming traffic in 2002, his jaw was infamously wired shut. When the doctors finally removed the wire from his mouth, they accidentally took something crucial with it: his filter. Since then, Kanye West has traveled further down a path of problematic behavior that the average consumer has ignored, much to their detriment. He has fallen out of the public’s favor through antics such as bigotry, problematic partnerships, and hyper-capitalism. While many parties share the blame, no one is as accountable as the consumer who continues to buy into Kanye’s celebrity.  

Kanye West’s history of problematic behavior is so extensive that you could dissect it in a semester-long college course and still miss a few marks. However, his unfiltered outbursts were not always in bad faith. One of his earliest controversies occurred at the 2005 Hurricane Katrina benefit concert, where Kanye went on an unprompted rant about the treatment of Black Americans, infamously saying, “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” live on air.  

While blunt activism like this is common today, this was unheard of twenty years ago. Yet, this would not be the last time we saw Kanye speak out as a force of change. At the 2009 Video Music Awards, a drunken Kanye West took the stage to refute Taylor Swift’s receiving of the Video of the Year Award. As time progressed, Kanye’s behavior became geared toward attacking social norms and political correctness. In the 2010s, Kanye made remarks defending rapist and pedophile Bill Cosby and labeling slavery as a choice. In the early 2020s, he advocated for “White Lives Matter,” leaned into anti-Semitic remarks, and used Nazi imagery in his “Vultures” album, all while engaging in public sex acts with his new fiancé. He has alienated every demographic of his fan base, from Jews and Black Americans to the very conservative evangelicals he so desperately wants to appeal to. The worst part is that this does not even come close to covering half of Kanye West’s history.   

In addition to his problematic behavior, Kanye West has become highly manipulative of the consumer through hyper-capitalistic tendencies and a general decline in the quality of music. His earliest instance of such was when he was paid $3 million to perform at the wedding of Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev despite his known record of human rights abuses. Almost a decade later, he was subject to a $30 million employment lawsuit on behalf of Sunday Service employees who claimed they were paid late, overworked, and unpaid for overtime work. 

Two years ago, he released his album Donda 2 exclusively on his Stem Player device to drive sales rather than give music to his fan base. The David Casavant Archive even sued him for incurring $200,000 in fees with several pieces never returned. Through all this, he drove album sales and grew his celebrity through shock value and dishonesty. If there has ever been an asshole in the music industry, it is Kanye.   

Kanye West’s celebrity continues to grow every day at the fault of the mindless consumer. Despite his behavior, he remains one of the wealthiest and most streamed musicians, with 65 million monthly listeners on Spotify. That means at least 65 million people excuse his behavior and continue to give a bigot their time and money. To make things worse, Kanye has found a brand-new audience in the far right and impressionable young men. It is crucial to recognize that his bigotry attracts such people to his celebrity and steer clear of it to avoid falling into the same traps as them. It is also an ethical consumer’s responsibility to steer their peers clear of such traps. Additionally, we must take proactive measures on top of our reactive steps. To be clear, we should boycott Kanye West’s music, his clothing, and more. His immunity from total consequence drives him, and we can only change that by changing the consumer.  

If Kanye West is the disease, then ethical consumption is the cure. After decades of bigoted behavior and unethical practices, Kanye has left behind a path of destruction and raised a new fan base of bigots from the ashes. The point has been reached, and it is shocking to see that he still reaps the benefits of his actions after so many years of terror. Unfortunately, until consumers band together and hold celebrities accountable, figures like Kanye West will continue their problematic behavior without consequences.