Kanye West has been suspended from Instagram for 24 hours, after he used a racial slur to describe TV presenter Trevor Noah.
A spokesperson for Instagram’s parent company Meta told TMZ and HuffPost that the suspension was due to West violating the company’s policy on hate speech, bullying and harassment.
Noah had criticised West while presenting The Daily Show, saying of West’s numerous recent posts about ex-wife Kim Kardashian: “What she’s going through is terrifying to watch … What we’re seeing is one of the most powerful, one of the richest women in the world, unable to get her ex to stop texting her, to stop chasing after her, to stop harassing her.”
West responded by rewriting the lyrics of Kumbaya to “koon baya my lord”, a twist on a word used by some to describe a Black person who rejects or undermines their own ethnicity.
Noah responded to the post, saying:
You’re an indelible part of my life Ye. Which is why it breaks my heart to see you like this. I don’t care if you support Trump and I don’t care if you roast Pete. I do however care when I see you on a path that’s dangerously close to peril and pain … Don’t ever forget, the biggest trick racists ever played on black people was teaching us to strip each other of our blackness whenever we disagree. Tricking us into dividing ourselves up into splinters so that we would never unite into a powerful rod.
Kardashian filed for divorce in January 2021, and she was declared legally single by a US court earlier this month. West has lamented the split on his 2021 album Donda and in a recent poem, Divorce. He has also repeatedly taunted Kardashian’s boyfriend, comedian and actor Pete Davidson, including in a music video where a claymation figure decapitated a model of Davidson. After criticism of the video, West defended it as creative expression, saying: “Art is not a proxy for any ill or harm.”
West also posted screenshots from a conversation with Kardashian in which she said he was “creating a dangerous and scary environment” and worried: “Someone will hurt Pete and this will all be your fault.” West later apologised for posting the screenshots and accompanying messages, saying: “I know sharing screen shots was jarring and came off as harassing Kim. I take accountability,” but he has since continued with public criticism of Kardashian and Davidson.
After West criticised her parenting, Kardashian wrote in February: “Divorce is difficult enough on our children and Kanye’s obsession with trying to control and manipulate our situation so negatively and publicly is only causing further pain for all. From the beginning, I have wanted nothing but a healthy and supportive co-parenting relationship because it is what is best for our children and it saddens me that Kanye continues to make it impossible every step of the way.”
