He really ain’t saying she a gold digger. Kanye West received the Visionary Award at the 2015 BET Honors this past Saturday, Jan. 24, delivering a rather loaded speech, where he discussed his marriage to Kim Kardashian, and his wife’s late father Robert Kardashian.
According to the Washington Post, the Yeezus rapper was introduced by Damon Dash, whose words prompted West to respond: “I understand what it is to be humbled for the first time.”
He then told the crowd about a meeting with Islam leader Louis Farrakhan Muhammad, Sr., whose reaction to West’s relationship with a “woman not of color” was “groundbreaking” and “special” for the rapper. West added (via Jezebel) that he and the religious leader went on to “focus on the idea of love and not the idea of separation.”
“At the barbershop… I used to hear people always talking about, ‘Man you know when an entertainer get on, of course you know he gon’ go and get a white girl and blah blah blah and a white girl gon’ get a rich black dude,'” the “Gold Digger” artist, 37, told his peers. “But I wanna say that my wife has dated broke black dudes. It got nothing to do with the money.”
According to Jezebel, West also told the crowd a poignant story involving Kim and her late father, attorney Robert Kardashian, who was subject to widespread racism after he handled the O.J. Simpson murder case in the ’90s. According to West, Robert Sr.’s Bentley was vandalized with the words “N—- Lover” after his successful high-profile win.
“She had never seen her father curse or get mad,” West told the crowd. “He was the most laid-back human being. And he went so crazy and tried to chase the people down. And she’s sitting there crying and was like, ‘Dad, why you going so crazy?’”
Kris Jenner‘s then-husband gently told his second-eldest daughter: “‘One day, you may have a black child…a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful black child…and it’s gonna be hard. You’re gonna see how hard it is.'” Indeed, in summer 2013, Kim and Kanye welcomed their first daughter, baby Nori.
The Washington Post reported that Yeezy used this anecdote to address the overarching issue of racism in society. “We focus on the micro — on the races,” he noted. “Not on the macro of the human race.”
Last May, Kim, 34, wrote an essay on her website about that very topic, saying she wanted to shield her daughter from the racism that she directly encountered in Vienna last year. “I realize that racism and discrimination are still alive, and just as hateful and deadly as they ever have been,” she wrote. “I want my daughter growing up in a world where love for one another is the most important thing.”
As for her high-profile marriage to West? Kim insisted it was “normal” for her superstar standards. “We stay home and hang out, we are truly obsessed with each other,” she told Entertainment Tonight. “We have the most normal relationship, if you can call anything about us normal. We have a really normal relationship and we are just happy.” See more photos of the couple at the BET Awards.
