Competing Realities
It’s late. The kind of late where everything slows down and the only sound left is thought. I don’t even remember how I got to this clip again. Maybe an algorithm. Maybe curiosity.
But there it is, Kanye West, Van Lathan, TMZ Live, 2018.
They’re standing face to face, talking about slavery, freedom, and truth.
And as I watch, I realize… this conversation feels different now.
Years later, it still hits like a lesson we haven’t finished learning.
Competing Realities: A Phenomenological Analysis of Public Dialogue Between Kanye West (Ye) and Van Lathan
Christopher Teel, A.B.D.
Doctoral Researcher, Educational Leadership and Training
ChampionQU Inc. | The Legacy Lab Framework
Abstract
This study examines one of the most important public conversations of the past decade, the televised exchange between Kanye West (Ye) and Van Lathan on TMZ Live. The moment became a cultural mirror, reflecting how individuals construct meaning, interpret history, and negotiate truth through dialogue. Using a phenomenological case study design, this research explores how Ye and Lathan expressed and defended competing realities through their discussion of freedom, accountability, and collective identity. Ye’s perspective represents a metaphysical understanding of liberation, centered on the belief that reality can be reshaped through thought and intention. Lathan’s perspective represents a grounded understanding of social responsibility, emphasizing history, consequence, and communal empathy. Through interpretive analysis, this study reveals that both viewpoints hold value within modern Black consciousness. Ye’s language invites imaginative transformation, while Lathan’s voice protects historical truth. Their encounter demonstrates how public dialogue can become an educational and emotional site of learning, where freedom and accountability must coexist.
Introduction
In the landscape of modern media, few conversations have carried as much cultural weight as the 2018 exchange between Kanye West and Van Lathan on TMZ Live. What began as a celebrity interview evolved into a national discussion about freedom, truth, and historical memory. In that moment, the two men represented more than disagreement; they embodied two distinct philosophies of reality. Ye argued that freedom begins in the mind, while Lathan insisted that freedom is meaningless without acknowledgment of history and consequence.
This study treats that televised encounter as a phenomenological case, meaning it seeks to understand how the participants experienced and expressed reality through their language and emotion. Rather than analyzing the event as controversy, this research views it as a social and intellectual turning point that revealed the tensions between individual vision and collective responsibility.
Problem Statement
Public dialogue often functions as a mirror for society, revealing the values and conflicts that shape collective understanding. However, few studies have examined moments of televised conversation as sites of philosophical inquiry. The problem this study addresses is the lack of critical analysis regarding how individuals within the same cultural group can articulate opposing interpretations of reality while claiming shared goals of liberation and growth. The Ye and Lathan dialogue offers a powerful example of this divide, inviting reflection on how truth and freedom are defined within the modern Black experience.
Purpose Statement
The purpose of this phenomenological case study is to explore how competing realities are constructed and defended through public dialogue. By analyzing the conversation between Kanye West and Van Lathan, this research seeks to understand how personal philosophy, emotional response, and cultural context interact within moments of public tension. The study aims to uncover the deeper meanings behind each participant’s expression of freedom, responsibility, and truth, and to consider how such exchanges contribute to broader conversations about identity, accountability, and moral leadership.
Research Questions
How do Kanye West and Van Lathan construct and defend their respective realities through dialogue?
What major themes emerge from their exchange regarding freedom, truth, and accountability?
How does the interplay between individualism and collectivism inform each speaker’s understanding of responsibility?
Theoretical Framework
This research draws upon social constructionism and critical phenomenology. Social constructionism suggests that reality is formed through language and social interaction. Critical phenomenology extends this idea by recognizing that lived experience is shaped by history, power, and cultural memory. Within this framework, Ye’s philosophy represents a phenomenology of transcendence, where consciousness has the power to redefine existence. Lathan’s philosophy represents a phenomenology of embodiment, where awareness must remain rooted in collective struggle and consequence. Together, their exchange illustrates how competing realities emerge when individuals interpret freedom through different moral and emotional lenses.
Methodology
Design
This study uses a single-case phenomenological design. The chosen case is a bounded public conversation that serves as an example of lived experience expressed through speech and emotion.
Data Source
The data consists of the verbatim transcript of the 2018 TMZ Live conversation between Kanye West and Van Lathan.
Data Analysis
The transcript was analyzed through four interpretive phases:
Initial immersion, to understand tone, pauses, and affect.
Open coding, identifying key expressions related to freedom, responsibility, pain, and truth.
Thematic grouping, which organized codes into categories such as Free Thought, Consequence, Empathy, Accountability, and Healing.
Interpretive synthesis, integrating both voices into a narrative that reveals their lived realities and shared emotional ground.
Researcher Role
The researcher serves as an observer and interpreter, acknowledging personal biases and cultural connection to the subject matter. Reflexive memos were used to ensure that interpretation remained empathetic and balanced.
Findings
Five central themes emerged from the analysis.
1. Freedom as Mental Liberation
Ye describes freedom as a state of mind that transcends physical or historical boundaries. He argues that reality can be chosen and shaped by individual thought.
2. Truth as Emotional Responsibility
Lathan anchors his statements in empathy and collective accountability. He insists that words spoken in public carry moral consequences.
3. Reality as Performance
The conversation illustrates how public dialogue functions as performance. Each participant uses the stage to communicate a version of truth, revealing how media transforms speech into spectacle and lesson.
4. Pain as Knowledge
Lathan’s visible emotion becomes evidence of lived experience. His pain acts as testimony, connecting individual awareness to generational memory.
5. Reconciliation through Empathy
Despite their disagreement, the dialogue ends with apology and recognition. Ye expresses remorse and understanding, suggesting that love can serve as a bridge between competing truths.
Discussion
The Ye and Lathan exchange reveals that reality is not fixed but continually negotiated through dialogue. Ye’s insistence on mental liberation reflects a deep human desire to escape systems of limitation, while Lathan’s insistence on accountability reflects a collective responsibility to honor truth. When examined together, their viewpoints illustrate the dynamic balance between imagination and realism.
This conversation also demonstrates how public dialogue can function as social pedagogy. In the spirit of Paulo Freire, it becomes a moment of learning through confrontation. The discussion forces both speakers, and the audience, to examine how freedom operates when separated from empathy, and how truth operates when separated from forgiveness. Their disagreement is not simply about politics or history; it is about how consciousness itself is formed and shared.
Implications
For Education
This case shows how dialogue can be used as a teaching tool for critical thinking and cultural awareness. Students and scholars can analyze such conversations to understand how meaning, power, and empathy are negotiated in real time.
For Media Literacy
The study emphasizes the importance of examining the emotional and ethical dimensions of public speech, especially when broadcast to millions.
For Cultural Healing
It demonstrates that empathy is the bridge between conflict and understanding. Through careful listening and reflection, communities can use difficult conversations as pathways toward unity.
Conclusion
“Competing Realities” captures more than a televised disagreement. It captures a defining cultural moment where two worldviews collided in full public view. Ye’s message of personal freedom invites transformation through imagination, while Lathan’s message of historical awareness invites healing through remembrance. Together, they reveal that freedom without empathy becomes isolation, and empathy without vision becomes stagnation.
This study concludes that dialogue remains one of the most powerful tools for societal learning. When people engage across difference with honesty and care, they transform conflict into understanding. The conversation between Kanye West and Van Lathan will remain one of the most important and instructive exchanges of the past decade, a reminder that truth is not only spoken but felt, and that growth often begins where realities collide..
Outro
When you listen closely, this conversation is not just about two men.
It is about two ideas that still shape how many of us live, think, and even vote.
On one side, there is the belief that freedom begins within,
that no system, no history, no label can define who we are if we choose to think beyond it.
That is the world Ye speaks from,
a world where power starts in the mind.
On the other side, there is the belief that freedom requires remembrance,
that we cannot heal without accountability, that truth has to be faced before it can be rewritten.
That is the world Van Lathan speaks from,
a world where love is expressed through honesty, through the courage to protect your people from harm.
These are not enemies.
They are the two most prevalent ways of thinking in our communities,
two philosophies trying to answer the same question.
How do we move forward and still stay whole?
As a researcher and as a Black man, I can admit that I lean toward Van’s side in this exchange.
That is where I stand, along with the majority of my friends
and, if I am being honest, along with Kanye West’s first three albums.
Those albums carried balance.
They held accountability and imagination at the same time.
They reminded us that truth and art do not have to compete,
that we can think freely and still think responsibly.
So maybe the goal is not to choose one reality over the other.
Maybe the lesson is that both can be taught,
one as liberation, the other as grounding,
so that people can decide where they stand,
not out of reaction but out of understanding.
That is what this study was always about.
Not who was right,
but what it means to listen deeply enough
to see the truth in both voices.
Competing Realities: A Phenomenological Analysis of Public Dialogue Between Kanye West and Van Lathan
Written and Narrated by Christopher Teel, A.B.D.
Doctoral Researcher, Educational Leadership and Training
ChampionQU Inc. | The Legacy Lab Framework