On New Year’s Day Kanye West released a new song featuring Paul McCartney. The discussion regarding the song quickly became about the idea that some Kanye fans had no idea who McCartney is, thanks to stories posted by an avalanche ofpublications.
As it turns out, these stories were all based on a few joke tweets purposely designed to enrage McCartney fans. A quick look at the accounts posting these tweets would have made their intentions quite obvious. As such, it’s embarrassing that so many news outlets spread this largely false click-bait story.
This is not the most disturbing aspect of the story though. While the tweets that generated these articles may have been jokes, the response was quite serious.
For example, on ABC News a smirking white anchor, Sara Haines, says among laughter, “Not only do they not know who he [McCartney] is, they actually think that he [West] discovered him, and is doing a generous thing by spotlighting this clearly talented musician. Evidence of a generation gap that is part shocking, and part hilarious.”
While teens’ ignorance of McCartney may be evidence of a generation gap, the backlash to this ignorance is proof of a race gap. The backlash was not restricted to the supposed fact that these teens didn’t know McCartney as there was a quite notable racial undertone. McCartney was posited as “real music” while Kanye was an “‘auto-tuned and corrected media puppet.” McCartney was referred to as Sir, and people wondered why he would “lower himself to working with a douche like Kanye?” One comment claimed that “Paul McCartney is a real talent — a talentless punk like Kanye should not be mentioned in the same sentence as Sir Paul.”
These sorts of comments, which dominated the reaction to the stories, clearly illustrate that figures like McCartney are accorded an almost mythical status due to their popularity in white culture. Meanwhile, Kanye is portrayed as a talentless hack that makes music for lesser people.
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