Jesus Walks, by Kanye West, explains his feelings of religion and talks about society, racism and war with ourselves. He compares his opinions and feelings to that of society’s perspective. This song holds a powerful meaning about the struggles and challenges that Kanye and African-Americans have faced and really got me thinking about society and and the stereotypes in our world today.
At the start of the song he says “We at war. We at war with terrorism, racism. But most of all we at war with ourselves”. From the use of the term ‘war’ this declares that Kanye believes we are all apart of it and all at war. People are constantly at war with their environment and others, but he believes that the root of all conflict lies internally. For me this suggests he is in a war of racism and inferiority. His reference to terrorism suggests that he is rapping during the time of George W. Bush’s presidency, where his time in office was characterised by the international War on Terror. The song itself is called ‘Jesus Walks’ which is suggesting that God is an invisible but very powerful being who is everywhere and therefore walks among us even if we do not yet realise it.
This song talks about the white supremacy that is present in our world in the past and still today. “Getting choked by detectives, yeah, yeah, now check the method. They be asking us questions, harass and arrest us” Kanye makes references and draws attention to to the aggressive and atrocious interrogation methods that the police use against African-Americans in order for them to confess to crimes they didn’t do. Because of skin colour and ethnicity, white sumpremicists such as those in the police force believe that African-Americans are the root of crime, which is a racist, pregadicial idea that it backed up with no facts but only hate. Even after all this hate and the racial comments they receive, they do not back down but put up a fight in order to get justice for themselves and change the past to hope to move forward in a united and culturally diverse future. “We ain’t going nowhere but got suits and cases”. For African-Americans in this context, suits refers to lawsuits as they traditionally have a much harder time dealing with the court system. Cases is talking about how when black men die, quite often due to gun violence, their corpses are suited up and placed in coffins (cold cases). The words suits and cases for African-Americans has far least pleasant connotations attached to it than for white people. This song really made me reflect and think about how white supremacy is still present a lot today an how we still have a long way to go before we have a world filled with equality. White supremacists dream of a world in which minorities are either silenced or nonexistent, where the white people are superior and have dominance. Personally this never really fully occurred to me as a large percentage of Wanaka is white with very little range in ethnicities. We live in a secluded part of the world, sheltered away from many negative aspects of our world. This song highlights to me the strength that the African-Americans have, where it isn’t just going to take a racist comment to knock them down. They are determined and head strong strong, driven by the need for justice for themselves.
Justice comes from a need to make something right, and in this case living in a world filled with equality is something that everyone is entitled to. Religion plays a large part in this song as back when this song was written, you were shamed and seen as inferior depending on what religion you followed. For Kanye, he needed Jesus like school needed teachers. It seemed perfectly normal for a song to be about guns, sex or lies, but a song about god was weird, especially for a rapper. in this aspect, I believe we have come a long way with religions where everyones religions and beliefs are accepted where I live. I know this may not be the case in other countries as we are very cut off from the rest of the world. I can’t relate and compare my experiences with theirs but this song has opened my eyes up to what really goes in our world beneath our feet.
ACHIEVED