Kanye West and the uncomfortable conversation none of us want to have.

Listen to this story being read by Clare Stephens, here.

Kanye West, who has legally changed his name to 'Ye', sits in a studio wearing all black. 

The white lanyard around his neck stands out, even more so when you realise that it's attached to an ultrasound image of a foetus. He's wearing it to show he's "pro-life," he tells his Fox News interviewer Tucker Carlson. "50 percent of black death in America is abortion, so I really don't care about people's responses," he says. "I perform for an audience of one, and that's God."

Throughout the two-part interview, West calls the promotion of plus size bodies "demonic," claiming it's a way to commit "a genocide of the Black race." He defends his decision to wear a White Lives Matter shirt at his Yeezy fashion show in Paris, saying he thought it was "funny". He explains that he makes these decisions using his instinct, like Tonya Harding doing a triple spin on the ice. He criticises his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, for overly sexualising herself and teases a "potential run" for political office in 2024. 

His answers are not coherent. He weaves between paranoia and biblical references and checking in that Carlson is following his line of thinking. He believes that things have been put in people's heads - his late mother's, Kim's - that stops them from seeing the truth. In a particularly bizarre tangent, he argues that no one knows where fashion editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, or talent manager (and Kris Jenner's current partner) Corey Gamble, came from. "These people were practically made in a laboratory," he claims.

Watching him speak, I see a person whose words are racist and sexist and fatphobic. He comes across as arrogant and entitled and, potentially, dangerous. Not long after the interview, he goes on to post blatantly antisemitic comments on Instagram and Twitter, leading to restrictions on his accounts. 

But as he answers Carlson's questions, in front of a camera that should arguably never have been turned towards him, I see something else.

Fear.

Behind West's eyes is sadness and desperation and confusion and the certainty that he is living in a reality that no one else understands. 

Watch some of Kanye West's interview with Tucker Carlson. Post continues after video.

Perhaps I see this because I know that West lives with bipolar disorder. He was diagnosed in 2016 after a psychiatric episode, and has spoken publicly about his experience with mental illness. He's described it as his "superpower," but told David Letterman in 2019 that when you're having a manic episode, "You pretty much don't trust anyone."

"When you're in this state, you're hyper-paranoid about everything. Everyone," he said. "Everyone now is an actor. Everything is a conspiracy. You see everything. You feel the government is putting chips in your head. You feel you're being recorded. You feel all of these things."

To watch Kanye West's current behaviour is to watch the consequences of those delusions play out in real time. It's to watch a man who doesn't believe he can trust the people closest to him. It's also to watch a very public manifestation of some of the cardinal symptoms of bipolar: poor decision-making, racing throughts, an inflated self-esteem or grandiosity. 

According to the current dialogue online, however, you're not meant to say that. Instead, the response to West's increasingly erratic behaviour over the last week has been: Kanye West's opinions are entirely separate from his psychiatric condition. Being bipolar doesn't make you racist. Anti-blackness has nothing to do with mental illness. A mental diagnosis does not inform your fundamental values as a human being. 

A viral meme points out that while West is mentally ill, mental illness doesn't generally lead people to threaten violence. 

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A post shared by matt bernstein (@mattxiv)

Of course, in theory, all these statements are true. There are plenty of people living with bipolar who have never thought, let alone publicised, the views West is spouting. To draw a direct, unmediated line between his diagnosis and his beliefs would be deeply stigmatising, and would paint an unfair and unnuanced picture of what bipolar broadly, and mania, hypomania and psychosis specifically, look like.

But the narrative that West's extreme views and the way he's choosing to express them has nothing to do with his mental illness is far too simplistic. And, as author Freddie deBoer argues, it's far too convenient. 

In a recent newsletter, deBoer - who himself has severe bipolar disorder - argues that our modern political culture can't seem to handle moral complexity. 

"In this era of social justice, everyone is divided between the perfectly unblemished victims and the permanently discarded oppressors," he writes. 

"If West’s erratic behavior was influenced by his bipolar disorder, we might feel compelled to extend sympathy to someone who’s guilty of saying some unfortunate things; we would sully the perfect distinction between goodies and baddies."

DeBoer has previously spoken and written about the problem with glorifying mental illness. He argues that when the 'voice' of mental illness is given to the most high-functioning in that population, we lose perspective of the debilitating nature of these conditions. We lose the mess. The impairment. The uncomfortable, complicated reality. 

DeBoer, who was institutionalised during a psychotic episode because he was a risk to himself and others, writes that in a psychiatric facility, you'll hear abhorent language. You'll see aggression. You'll find people who have done "genuinely unfortunate things," because "that's what mental illness actually is". DeBoer describes it as "not aesthetically-pleasing movie madness but grubby, dirty instability."

When our depictions of mental illness only exist in curated images or romanticised stories, we don't see the regret and the shame. You don't see the people who have done or said bad, antisocial things. You don't see the pain that family and friends are left with. DeBoer points out that during a psychotic episode, you lose some contact with reality. Your behaviour becomes a response to a set of beliefs that aren't true. 

To ignore the fact that some people experiencing psychosis or mania do behave in offensive or dangerous ways  - that are otherwise inconsistent with who they are - is to water down these conditions. It's to draw an arbitrary line around what we will and will not accept as a manifestation of mental illness. It's to fundmentally misunderstand the clinical reality. 

Jonathan Seidler, author of It’s A Shame About Ray, has written about his experiences of mania, noting how West's song 'All Of The Lights' "is exactly what the inside of my head looks like when I can’t come down".

"Some of the things I’ve done while I’ve been Up you won’t even believe," he writes. "The stealing, the lying, the f...ing, the drugs, the violence. I’m not sure I even believe it. It’s an honest-to-god miracle I’m not in jail."

Reflecting on West's presidential run in 2020, Seidler writes "it's honestly something I have considered a good idea at various points in my life."

Now, of course, it's far harder to talk about West's behaviour in the context of his diagnosis. When that behaviour is outwardly racist and sexist and cruel towards those who challenge him. When that behaviour is blatantly antisemitic, and harmful to a minority group with a history of persecution that spans thousands of years. What about their pain? What about their mental health? Certainly, the fact that Kanye West happens to have bipolar doesn't make his words any less offensive or dangerous or capable of inciting violence.

But acknowledging the reality of mental illness doesn't mean suggesting that a person who is having a psychotic or manic episode is not responsible for their actions. They are - legally and socially. 

It’s simply to say that mental illness makes for a complicated story.

If we want to talk honestly about mental health, as we repeatedly vow to do on days like World Mental Health Day or R U OK Day, we need to start talking about the messy, unlikeable, and fundamentally antisocial ways mental illness can manifest. The behaviours of people with severe mental health conditions don't always remain private, transpiring behind closed doors and in ways that are quiet and unintrusive.

Being more open about these conditions means sitting with the uncomfortable reality that it’s highly likely that, at least to some extent, West’s behaviour is informed by his bipolar. But two things can be true: He can be a person doing bad things, abhorrent things, things that need to be criticised and challenged, and a person worthy of our empathy. We can do both. 

Interestingly, it’s Kim Kardashian who advocated for this empathy in 2020, after West spoke publicly about a deeply private family decision about abortion at a political rally.

"We as a society talk about giving grace to the issue of mental health as a whole, however we should also give it to the individuals who are living with it in times when they need it the most," she wrote.

"I kindly ask that the media and public give us the compassion and empathy that is needed so that we can get through this."

I don’t think we’ve figured out exactly what it looks like to give grace to people experiencing severe mental illness, particularly when they're actively hurting others. 

But for Kanye West, it certainly doesn’t look like giving him a microphone and placing a camera in front of him. Perhaps it looks like actively turning the camera away, just as West's friend Clarence 'Coodie' Simmons ultimately did when filming a documentary about him. 

But maybe 'giving grace' is about acknowledging that human beings who do bad things aren't always the monsters we want to believe they are. And empathy is a more powerful tool than shame. 

For more from Clare Stephens, you can follow her on Instagram. 

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