Kanye West, also known as Ye, issued an open letter apology in the form of an ad in the Wall Street Journal in late January for derogatory comments he has made toward Jews and Black People. His destructive behavior is caused by his bipolar disorder’s manic episodes that led to a neurological damage from a brain injury to his frontal lobe he suffered in 2002 from a car crash he infamously rapped about in “Through The Wire.”
It’s public knowledge he lives with bipolar disorder, which was originally diagnosed in 2016.
Does he deserve our grace because he’s mentally ill, or not? I want to know why we should and why we shouldn’t.
The case against forgiveness
Actor Jamie Lee Curtis wouldn’t forgive him due to a tweet he posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Ye tweeted, “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE. The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti-Semitic because black people are actually Jew also. You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.”
This incident brought her to tears.
As a result, X locked his account and removed the post regarding his hateful rhetoric that violated the social media platform’s rules. Other celebrities also came out publicly against Ye’s offensive tweet that included musician Jack Antonoff, journalist Maria Shriver and comedian Sarah Silverman.
Here are three other examples of hate speech from Ye:
- “I prefer my kids knew Hannukah than Kwanzaa. At least it will come with some financial engineering.”
- Thinking that Jared Kushner and his family being all about making money.
- Stated Planned Parenthood Founder, Margaret Sanger, “a known eugenics,” founded the organization with the KKK “to control the Jew population.” He also shared, “When I say Jew, I mean the 12 lost tribes of Judah, the blood of Christ, who the people known as the race Black really are. This is who our people are.”
The problem with his hateful rhetoric is that it is tied to antisemitic tropes and conspiracies.
His hateful rhetoric is tied to common stereotypes and tropes that Jews are greedy, not “really Jews,” excessively materialistic, exploitative of other’s personal gain, overly wealthy and controlling of the world’s finances.
The rapper’s hateful rhetoric contributed to the rise of antisemitism in the U.S. because it has made it acceptable to talk about Jews in stereotypical terms.
FBI data showed that anti-Jewish hate crimes had increased by 63% from 2022 to 2023, in addition to single-bias anti-Jewish hate crimes making up 15% of all reported hate crimes in 2023 and 68% of all reported religion-based hate crimes. This was a consistent pattern from prior years as well.
Other examples of antisemitic misconduct include the following in 2025:
- Ye posted statements including “I’m a Nazi” and “Some of my best friends are Jewish and I don’t trust any of them.”
- Ran a Super Bowl ad directing viewers to an online store that briefly sold a $20 T-shirt wearing a black swastika.
- Released a music video on X titled, “HEIL HITLER (HOOLIGAN VERSION),” featuring Nazi imagery and the lyric “So I became a Nazi, I’m the villain.”
Additional grounds for withholding forgiveness
Ye wore the shirt with the slogan, “White Lives Matter” at a fashion show in Paris in October 2022.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, “White Lives Matter” became popularized in 2015 as “a racist response to the Black Lives Matter movement.”
Consequently, there was backlash to this event which involved Ye exposing a conversation he and Sean Combs, also known as Diddy, had over text about it. The rapper exposed their conversation on his Instagram account.
Ye texted Diddy, a record executive, and told him that Jews control him and claimed “war” on them too. The rapper was saying Jews used Diddy to try to get him to stop wearing the “White Lives Matter” shirt because of its messaging.
The rapper took to his Instagram story after the backlash and said the Black Lives Matter movement was a scam.
He even said George Floyd’s murder was fentanyl-related on an episode of the “Drink Champs” episode and Police Officer Derek Chauvin’s “knee wasn’t on his neck like that” around the same time too.
Why someone should forgive him
How should we tolerate and begin to accept Ye’s behavior?
Freddie deBoer, an author and cultural critic who lives with bipolar disorder, said we should forgive him.
He said the public’s approach to mental illness is problematic because it has romanticized mental health conditions such as anxiety, but none of the more severe ones that would transgress social norms.
In other words, we are still alienating people who suffer from severe mental illnesses, like Ye.
The problem with Ye is he makes it easy for us to do it because of his hateful rhetoric on different platforms for the public to see.
Another point that deBoer brought up is who Ye surrounds himself with. The people around him enable his behavior and don’t limit or remove his access to social media and let him speak on platforms like “Drink Champs” and conservative platforms like the Sandy Hook denier Alex Jones’ show, “Info Wars.”
Why would anybody let a mentally ill man speak on a platform that is being viewed by the public to react and dissect?
His celebrity accelerated his breakdown as a public figure which included appearances on “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”
The cultural critic was not surprised by Ye’s behavior since, “Psychotic delusions tend to borrow from previously existing conspiracy theories. You’re highly likely to borrow the language and the explanations and the theories of the conspiracy movements around you. And I can tell you from personal experience, there’s a lot of people in mental illness facilities, mental health facilities, who believe in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, because anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are some of the oldest in the world. They’re some of the most prevalent in the world.”
Julie Fast, author of “Loving Someone With Bipolar Disorder” and “Take Charge of Bipolar Disorder,” is also someone who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder over 25 years ago. She showed symptoms years before she was diagnosed and spoke on how Ye can manage his struggles with his mental health.
First, he needs to take his medication. It was reported that the rapper stopped taking it as it made him feel like a zombie and he thought it would diminish his creativity. Fast refuted this idea with CBS and referenced how people on drugs like cocaine may feel more creative, or in a state of mind that makes them do their job well, but they are doing harm to themselves.
She shared how people experiencing hypomanic episodes will gravitate to that person and when they are in depressive states, people will do the opposite.
Second, another possible solution for Ye is to find balance and a way to be creative in a stable environment.
Ye needs to lead the conversation on severe mental health illness. He needs to do this by going on many different platforms and talking about how he lives with bipolar disorder. He can repetitively use his platform to reshape the indirect damage he caused to the Black and Jewish communities.
His apology and what he does afterwards opens the door on how we can be more accepting of people who live with severe mental illness.
We have to see him for who he is and that is someone who lost the first love of his life, his mother. His deceased mother may have been the only person who could help him balance out his manic episodes.
Furthermore, the rapper ought to surround himself with positive people who will support him at his worst and best. This is easier said than done due to the extreme amount of backlash he has constantly received in his career. This is why he deserves grace and his celebrity.
He alluded to this idea during an interview with David Letterman in 2020 that was discussed on CBS This Morning where he related his “sprained brain” to having a sprained ankle. “If someone has a sprained ankle, we don’t push on it more, do we? So why would we push on a “sprained brain?” Ye also shared how people do everything to make it worse and that we do not see what that person is going through, which relates back to how we can see someone with a sprained ankle.
Fortunately, the car crash he suffered in 2022 is the reason why he has bipolar disorder, makes the connection of a sprained ankle to a “sprained brain” stronger because now that we see how the injury happened.
A call for understanding and grace
Kanye West is just like us. He does not understand his bipolar disorder; if he did, he would balance out how to be creative with his medication. We do not understand how to perceive people who go through these struggles. If we did, there would not be so much negative backlash over the years.
Also, the rapper’s doctors have said he was experiencing symptoms of autism, which he was not. This means many of us do not have the proper understanding of people who live with bipolar disorder. The best way to understand it better is for Ye to lead the conversation on his public platform.
I can see a scenario where he retires or takes a long break from music to focus on his mental health and adjust to taking his medication while being creative at the same time. I do not know if he can manage being manic and releasing music every year. Instead, he could perform an apology tour on various platforms in the near future.
I hope these conversations lead to the public giving more grace to people who live with mental illness. We should stop calling these people “crazy” and understand why one may not be on medication. He deserves our sympathy as he is human being, just like us.
Featured image: “Kanye West 10” by Super 45 | Música Independiente, CC BY-NC 2.0
Edited by Nancy Martin & James Sutton
