Okay, let’s take a serious step back here.

Before I go on any further, I’d like to make sort of a disclaimer: Kanye West has always been a creative genius that has very interesting and thought provoking opinions on human nature and society as a whole. But the man is capable of being flat-out wrong sometimes. Accept it. No matter what he says in his lyrics, he is human.

Yeezy (not -us) made news lately by announcing that he was “taking back” the confederate flag from “the racists.”

“React how you want,” said Kanye West. “Any energy you got is good energy. You know the confederate flag represented slavery in a way – that’s my abstract take on what I know about it. So I made the song “New Slaves”. So I took the Confederate flag and made it my flag. It’s my flag now. Now what are you going to do?”

Great intentions, not-so-great execution. Well, at least he hasn’t yet got a large flagpole and started having the confederate flag hang from his home. I wonder if Yeezy would ever plan to hang the actual American flag from his home after this little incident?

Unlike other things that have arguably been so-called taken back, like the n-word, the Confederate flag doesn’t really need to be. What Kanye’s doing is drawing more attention to something that was halfway forgotten or purposefully ignored. At the end of the day, don’t forget the truth behind this age-old cliché: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It applies here. Think on that if you’d like. – Keith Reid-Cleveland