Diamonds Are Forever

  Last September, I wrote a column for Pulse called “The Fashion of The Christ,” in which I talked about the reemergence of religion in pop culture.  It was centered around Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks,” a song that almost single-handedly revived hip-hop as an instrument of social change, in a time when far too many songs were about bling, cars, clothes, women, and parties that don’t stop ‘til six in the morning.  Now, Kanye is at it again.

  The first single from his upcoming sophomore album, Late Registration, is called “Diamonds from Sierra Leone.”  Well, that’s its new name.  When I originally received the song from Roc-A-Fella Records, it was simply called “Diamonds.”  A re-released version featuring Jay-Z, which dropped last week, is much darker and casts an unflattering light on the diamond industry.

  “The title was always ‘Diamonds from Sierra Leone, but the label didn’t understand what I was doing so they did their own thing,” West said in a recent interview with BBC.  “We touch on the conflict—diamonds in the blood, diamonds out in Africa—in the video.  We’re really going for it.”

  Set against a sample of “Diamonds Are Forever,” the James Bond theme by Shirley Bassey, the rapper lambastes the diamond industry, accusing it of continuing to mine and sell so-called “conflict diamonds,” or “blood diamonds.”  (“Conflict diamond” is a term applied to a diamond that, while being mined, results in the loss of human life or limb.)

  It’s an alarming message—coming from Kanye, who was once renowned for his flashy jewelry and close affiliation with the Hip-Hop community’s most famous diamond-peddler, Jacob The Jeweler. 

  In the song, West draws an interesting parallel between the African children who die mining the diamonds and American kids who die selling drugs to buy them.

  West focuses his attention on Sierra Leone, a small diamond-rich country in Africa.  For more than a decade, rival militias battling over the illegal diamond trade have killed and mutilated thousands of civilians.  Digging deeper into the history of diamond mining, you’ll find that children were often used to reach small, cramped areas of the mines, often resulting in the death or dismemberment of the young miners. 

  Carson Glover, a spokesman for the Diamond Information Center, recently released a statement offering the other side of the story.  In 2000, the diamond industry implemented a new system for certifying diamonds called the Kimberley Process.  Sanctioned by the United Nations, the process “introduced a ‘certificate of origin,’ allowing only legitimate diamonds to be traded on the global market, therefore creating a zero-tolerance environment for conflict diamonds around the world,” Glover states.

  In fact, he adds, “the volume of conflict diamonds in circulation is believed to have dropped below one percent, if any at all, and it is virtually impossible for unscrupulous dealers to sell non-certified rough diamonds.”

  While Kanye might not be ready to give his bling back, he is doing his part to raise awareness about the dark side of the diamond trade.  As he told Billboard, “I wanted to do whatever I could to learn more and educate people about the problem.” 

-From Pulse
   June 23, 2005