Who Is Van Lathan? New Details About The TMZ Staffer Who Stood Up To Kanye West For Saying Slavery Was A Choice
Van Lathan had something to say about it.
TMZ TMZ’s Van Lathan has made headlines for standing up to Kanye West and voicing his opposing thoughts about slavery when the rapper said he believed it was a “choice.”
Van Lathan threw a powerful rebuttal at the music mogul, who claimed he was “thinking free” and is gaining a lot of attention for it.
“When you hear about slavery for 400 years — for 400 years?” West said. “That sounds like a choice. Like, you was there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all? It’s like we’re mentally in prison.”
West is no stranger to expressing his wild opinions and thoughts and has recently jumped back on Twitter to let the world into his brain.
“Do you feel like I’m thinking free and feeling free?” West questioned the newsroom.
Lathan was “appalled” by West’s statement and decided to let the “Famous” singer in on what he thought of such a claim.
“I actually don’t think you’re thinking anything,” he told West. “And what you’re doing right now is actually the absence of thought and the reason why I feel like that is because Kanye, you’re entitled to your opinion." You’re entitled to believe whatever you want but there is fact and real-world, real-life consequence behind everything that you just said."
"While you are making music and being an artist and living the life that you’ve earned by being a genius, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats to our lives. We have to deal with the marginalization that has come from the 400 years of slavery that you said, for our people, was a choice.”
Ouch.
“Frankly, I’m disappointed, I’m appalled and brother, I am unbelievably hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something, to me, that’s not real.”
So who is this gutsy man?
Lathan hosts a podcast where he talks about his opinions on current issues and events. Van Lathan’s The Red Pill covers a wide variety of topics and often includes an interview with well-known names in pop culture.
On the latest podcast, titled “Wake Up Mr. West,” Lathan speaks with Charlamagne Tha God about Kanye’s social media presence.
Lathan does shy from opposition to his thoughts and will gladly express his opinions openly.
You can find Kanye’s critic covering sports on occasion. He seems to like to change things up every once in a while all while continuing to discuss relevant culture.
One of his most well-known sports journalism was about the abuse the women who date or marry football players suffer.
According to Hollywood Life, Lathan previously worked as a tour guide for TMZ’s Hollywood your bus.
He gave the 411 on celebrities around the city and brought the tourists to the hottest spots in Hollywood.
Now, he's breaking it down for the public via a newsroom and is not backing down.
"The misinformation that's coming out his mouth can actually affect people and people need to have the opportunity to hear both sides of things," Lathan told Complex. "And if he's going to sit up there on a pulpit—he was up, raised above the rest of us sitting on the TMZ Live stage talking—it wasn't my job to destroy Kanye West or make a viral moment. It was to make sure what people heard doesn't resonate with us all. The point was to make sure the opposite method of thinking was represented and we do that every day here."
West has since taken to Twitter to say that he knows "that slaves did not get shackled and put on a boat by free will," but still felt attacked for presenting new ideas.