The letter was titled, “To Those I’ve Hurt.” 

“I said and did things I deeply regret. Some of the people I love the most, I treated the worst,” Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, opined in a full page ad published in The Wall Street Journal’s print issue Jan. 26. West apologized for the antisemetic and anti-Black comments he made in recent — and not so recent — years. 

West addressed the Black and Jewish communities, as well as “the people I love the most,” stating, “You endured fear, confusion, humiliation, and the exhaustion of trying to have someone who was, at times, unrecognizable,” the letter continued.

West declared himself “not a Nazi” and attributed his inflammatory behavior to his bipolar disorder, which he claims he developed after a car accident in 2002 left him with a misdiagnosed brain injury. He also apologized to the Black community, stating, “I am so sorry to have let you down.”

“Those I’ve hurt” is a pretty encompassing category for West. Despite this, many fans are completely willing to allow the West “they know” back into the spotlight after his simple “I’m sorry.”

“I told you it was mental illness, not malice,” one post on X read; “kanye [sic] genuinely getting his act together would be the greatest victory yet,” said another. Vanity Fair gave West his first large, legitimate platform by a major publication in years by publishing an exclusive interview with him the day the letter came out (“all press is good press,” the maxim West exudes goes).

It should go without saying that West’s apology should not be taken at face value, but alas, it seems it needs to be said. 

West’s apology comes at a convenient time: He recently signed a new seven-figure record deal after he and his label were disaffiliated from legendary recording company Def Jam Recordings in 2022, and his new album, “Bully,” is set to be released March 20. His previous come-to-Jesus apology in 2023 also closely coincided with the release of his album “VULTURES 1,” an apology he took back in 2025.

His comments and actions toward Jewish people, which include but are not limited to making a song called “Heil Hilter,” tweeting “I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE” and selling merchandise with swastikas on it, are reprehensible and will not disappear with a single letter, especially not during a heightened time of antisemitism.

As a young woman with an unmistakably Jewish surname, I have seen firsthand how recent antisemitism from around the political spectrum loudly affects even non-practicing Jews like myself — not to mention its deadly consequences for more religious folks. I will never forget an acquaintance of mine, a West idolizer, yelling at me to “pick up pennies on the floor” in front of a large group of people around the time West rescinded his apology last year. I will never forget the silence following this comment.

His “exploitative anti-Blackness,” as New York Times opinion columnist Charles M. Blow calls it in his 2022 column, remixed West’s fame into one of white supremacist glory that predates his Trumpian alliance, from selling shirts with confederate flags on them in 2013 to calling racism a “dated concept” in 2015. After his outspoken right-wing support, he stated that slavery “sounds like a choice” and wore a “White Lives Matter” shirt to a YZY fashion show. 

“Coming from the mouth of an international superstar, a rapping fashion designer, oppression starts to sound like freedom to those who shy away from or openly reject a serious analysis of politics and current affairs,” Blow wrote. It should not be the sole job of those affected by West to condemn his outbursts holistically — the largest voices in media, like West’s, cannot be excused as simply “controversial” when they perpetrate explicit harm. West’s influence remains apparent after a video of white supremist Nick Fuentes and other internet miscreants dancing along to “Heil Hilter” in a Miami nightclub went viral last month.

The letter is further invalidated by what it’s missing, as it fails to address the abuse West perpetrated on the women surrounding him. It makes no mention of his exploitative relationship with Bianca Censori, during which he made statements such as, “I have dominion over my wife,” nor accusations against him for sex trafficking, stalking, assault and rape from his former assistant. 

These are not the only reasons to take West’s apologies with a slab of salt. This apology doesn’t exist in a vacuum and should be taken into account with the same deftness and intention that the public-facing persona of West should be, but rarely is. The “Kanye” the world sees is a character — a character with real implications, no doubt — but not a reality. 

“Looking back, I became detached from my true self,” the letter said. But has the public ever known West’s true self?

West’s upbringing doesn’t fully align with his public-facing persona, nor his lyrics, like, “From a place where the fathers gone/ the mothers is hardly home,” in “Crack Music.” West’s mother was a professor at Chicago State University, and his father was an Atlanta-based photojournalist. Despite their divorce, West, who lived with his mother, grew up middle-class in Chicago and spent time in a student exchange program in China. Before dropping out of college (which inspired his hit album, “The College Dropout”), West studied painting and English at Chicago State. 

West’s persona is full of half-truths. He grew up near the South Side of Chicago that many rappers talk about. He is a Black man who has faced systemic barriers, racism and bigotry, but is “no arbiter of Black freedom,” wrote journalist and Reverend Danté Stewart. These half truths have made West an armoured shapeshifter, accommodating him to different yet equally high pinnacles of fame, with his undeniably generational musical talent shrouding both. He even weaponizes his diverting forms simultaneously, such as when he said Donald Trump, not Barack Obama, inspired him as a young Black man to run for president.

His apology is full of half-truths, too. He apologizes “to those I’ve hurt” but excludes the mention of the women he subjugated — women which include his peers, spouses and daughter. He speaks of implementing regimented help, yet has “found comfort in Reddit forums,” a notorious breeding ground for prejudicial and extremist communities he has historically egged on. 

West’s candid recounting of his bipolar disorder should be taken seriously, and it is completely deserving of empathy from fans and critics alike; mental illness, a history of substance abuse and fame can be devastatingly impactful to anyone, especially someone on an isolating pedestal like West. 

But it’s worth considering the damage that has already been done and that the inconsistencies of the “Kanye” of the past have bled into the present. 

Avinoam Patt, the director of the Center for the Study of Antisemitism at New York University, reinforces in the preamble to West’s interview with Vanity Fair that “the vast majority of people who have mental health issues, or specifically have bipolar disorder, don’t espouse antisemitic or racist ideas.”

I cannot say I have been in West’s head, nor can I say that a college journalist like myself was granted an opportunity to speak with him. But it is valuable to consider the possibility that this apology, like West’s other actions, is a product of the “theater of popular desires” scholar Stuart Hall speaks of — a mirror-like performance by pop culture that reflects the collective wishes and needs of the consumer. Are we watching West make his next and newest play at appealing to the masses’ fantasy of himself? We will have to wait and see.

Remember what West raps in “Graduation”: “Everything I’m not made me everything I am.” 

Isabella Bernstein is a fourth-year journalism and criminal justice major. Isabella can be reached at bernstein.i@northeastern.edu.

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