The entitlement seeping out of Kim K’s allegations and threats against a non-profit serving black and brown communities reeks of white privilege. We’ve seen Kim leverage her white passing identity along with her wealth a multitude of times to profit both herself and the Kardashian empire. The Kardashian’s repeated fetishization of Black men and their boundless cultural appropriation shows how little they really care about our communities. Kim K’s recent comments about Donda’s House just reaffirm that.

Kim K is in no way, shape or form a community service organizer. If we’re being generous, we could call her a philanthropist, meaning she donates money that she already has to causes she deems worthy of monetary support. Neither her or her family have ever meaningfully organized around social justice issues that impact the communities they love to appropriate from. Yet somehow, in her mind, removing Donda’s House from it’s current organizers to “let” her privileged children “run it the way it should be run” is a viable option.

The mere thought that Kanye should be exempt from financially raising funds for an organization that works to bring music education to inner city schools, a non-profit that he co-founded, is capitalism at its best. If Kanye could not raise the funds, his global influence and long list of millionaire friends and investors could certainly scrape together a mere $100,000 annually for operations. But the fact is that the rich can start non-profits and foundations but abandon them when it’s no longer beneficial. We see this blatant trivialization of Donda’s House when Kim uses it as a leverage point to demean and threaten Rhymefest like a bargaining chip in order to make a point.

Kim’s comments are merely epitomizations of how non-profits actually work in reality. In the non-profit world, the majority of non-profit leaders do not represent the communities they’re serving. Studies show that “Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and other racial and ethnic minorities still fill fewer than 20 percent of nonprofit executive-director positions” — that number hasn’t changed in more than a decade. Non-profits are also too often reliant upon state funding or money laden funders, who may at any time decide to retract their support. Donda’s House experienced this in 2015 when the state of Illinois essentially took back grants it had awarded to over 30 non profit organizations due to a “budget hole”. Kanye West donated around $130,000 to Donda’s House, which allowed the organization to continue their work. But $130,000 really isn’t that much money for an organization serving entire communities of youth- broken down, it only really covers the salaries of maybe 5 or 6 staff members. While the $130,000 was publicly appreciated and Ye lauded for his contributions, it wasn’t that big of a sum coming from a man whose net worth was over $150 million in 2015.

It is typical of white people to remove their support, whether it be monetary or otherwise, when things are not going their way. That is precisely the threat that Kim K made- because she’s upset about Kanye being called out for his lack of support, she sees it fit to remove the Black people running an organization for Black people and to leave it to her children, who have no concept of what “poor” and “inner city” mean as concepts. Thinking “I can do it better, though I do not have the qualifications or background” is a line of thought symptomatic of white privilege.

Kim’s privilege in even being able to pass down generational wealth and an organization to her children is one of the leading problems plaguing non-profits. Instead of being left in the hands of capable, culturally competent leaders, foundations and non-profits can be passed down in a familial line, from family member to family member. In fact, “there may be no better way for the super-rich to ensure the clout of heirs for generations to come than to lock up their wealth in a foundation” or organization. This growing trend of “philanthropy” disguising attempts to keep wealth within the family is a dangerous one as it allows the rich to stay rich under the guise of helping the community at large.

Throughout it all, Rhymefest’s response to Kim K was well measured and diplomatically written. And throughout the entire exchange, Kim K failed to mention how her husband’s support of white supremacist Donald Trump and #MAGA negatively impacted Donda’s House. Ye’s comments were so controversial that the non-profit had to issue public statements to beg people to continue their contributions to Donda’s House despite the rapper’s views. “We ask that those who feel hurt, angered by or frustrated with Kanye West not penalize or throw away their support, respect and advocacy for us,” the organization wrote.

Kim K’s comments only expose how disconnected she is o and exemplifies how she views herself in society, one where she’s had every privilege of being a hyper visible, rich white passing woman. Kanye West has remained curiously silent throughout the whole exchange- we can only hope that the silence is a side effect of self reflection.

Who are you fighting for Kanye? Who is your music for?

Is it for us?

Was it ever for us?