As popular as they are in pop culture, not everyone has heard about Kanye West and his most recent visit to TMZ. If you don’t know either Kanye or TMZ, it might be helpful to do a Google search because both are influential to our youth and young adults. Kanye West has long been in the spotlight for controversial music, statements, clothing, being married to Kim Kardashian (if you don’t know who she is I am really worried about you at this point) and his many conflicts with hugely popular music artists.

A lot of attention was paid to Kanye’s extremely controversial comments about Black people and slavery and his unapologetic support of Donald Trump. Many people were dissing and dismissing him and wondering out loud about his mental stability. To be fair, in my opinion, Kanye’s mental health has been questionable for a number of years now. I started to take notice months after his mother died unexpectedly. They were incredibly close and this blow left him without his longtime friend, adviser, cheerleader and confidante.

Having suffered this major life-changing blow myself, I understood the extreme behavior, intoxicated rants and deep sadness that seemed to be on display in his public appearances. But this new episode seems to have pushed things too far for too many and the wrath on social media in particular has been swift, ugly and vitriolic.

Enter Van Lathan, now known as “the TMZ brother.” Kanye spoke to a silent room filled with TMZ employees. Scanning the room you could see a host of facial expressions ranging from ‘oh boy this is trouble’ to ‘this dude is crazy,’ but no one spoke up until… Van Lathan, who seemed like he could no longer hold his silence, took Kanye on.

Van Lathan’s response to Kanye has gone viral with the majority of people applauding him and wanting to give him a medal. I even posted the video on my FB page pledging my support. But here’s the thing, I get why people are talking about and cheering the video, but what people are failing to see are the lessons about conflict here. I went back and watched again, because I so appreciated the words that were said by Van Lathan that I had to pull an old school move and play it over and over again. Anyone who grew up when I grew up understands how we had to keep putting the needle back on the record player to our favorite song in order to hear it again and again… that’s old school.

Playing the video back two more times is when I saw it. I saw the three lessons about conflict that everyone else was missing and I couldn’t wait to share them with you. If you want to see the video for yourself here’s the link – https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fmarvin.coles%2Fvideos%2F10215206706537391%2F&show_text=0&width=560.

Lesson 1: Van Lathan’s response was not condescending, did not include name-calling or disrespect. He laid out his points with reason and personal facts and at the same time gave respect to Kanye being his own person entitled to his own opinion. He spoke his truth, debated Kanye’s truth and offered him some things to think about. The lesson here is that we can make our points in a conflict without villainizing, ridiculing or denying the good that others have accomplished.

Lesson 2: This is the one that everybody missed. Kanye is listening the entire time. Did you miss that? I did the first time. Kanye respectfully takes it all in. At one point, he starts to respond and realizes that Van is not finished and so he stops and continues to listen. That is often not done in conflict, especially in heated, public conflicts where someone is in the power position. Kanye being the celebrity had the power to cut hm off, curse him out, storm off or threaten never to come back and he did none of the above. Listening is something so often taught, but seldom done well.

Mr. Kanye West, while I disagree with you, I applaud your wonderful demonstration of listening during a difficult conflict.

Lesson 3: Van Lathan is passionate about his response to Kanye and that actually escalates throughout his response without escalating the conflict. It is possible to come from the place of culture and/or emotion without making things worse. True that these two men are from the same African American culture and as a result may understand the passion that is often a part of that culture, but that is not necessarily a guarantee that things won’t escalate. I believe it is because of the first two lessons that this passion did not ignite this conflict further. We can own our responses, be passionate and still respect the other person in the conflict.

We can have conflict with one another and actually have the difficult conversations if more often we choose to use the skills of conflict resolution. Even people we vehemently disagree with can be listened to if we decide to open ourselves up to that choice. Today, at this point in history more than ever we are being challenged to do just that. It is hard, heck yes, it is hard but it is one of the few things that is going to save us as a country and as a world. I’ve learned that there are lessons everywhere if we look
for them.