The idea that Black people can’t be racist is built on the notion that Black people don’t have access to the power to wield white supremacy and thus cannot be racist. But Dr. Ibram Kendi says we cannot be neutral in the battle against racism—either we are racist or anti-racist. There is no sitting the game out. America’s systems will automatically produce racist outcomes if we do nothing so either we are doing things that fight against white supremacy or we are perpetuating it. Black people are not free from this—we can absolutely do things that perpetuate white supremacy. As an easy example, look at Sam Jackson’s Stephen in Django Unchained. He is a handmaiden of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Master Candy, lording over the other slaves, warning him when he’s being tricked, helping him maintain power. He is an agent of white supremacy. His behavior is absolutely racist. You need not be a captain of industry or a Judge or a police officer to perpetuate racism. Candace Owens’s career is about helping white supremacy. She stands on the notion that Black people can’t be racist and says things that would get some white people cancelled. She uses the Get Out Of Being Racist card to be racist and get paid for it. She is absolutely an agent of white supremacy. The first time many people became aware of Candace was when Kanye tweeted about her.
When I was writing my 2012 book about Blackness Who's Afraid Of Post-Blackness: What It Means To Be Black Now one of the professors I interviewed taught me the folly of trying to determine whether or not a person is racist. This involves peering into their soul and judging where they stand for their entire life and leads to them pulling out a Black friend or two as exculpatory evidence as if the charge of being a racist requires one to be hateful and oppressive toward every single Black person they met. This is an impossible standard—most people are far more complex than that standard suggests. And as Robin DiAngelo, the author of White Fragility, says in her recent interview on Dr. Marc Lamont Hill’s great new podcast Coffee and Books, most of the racism many of us encounter on a daily basis is probably microaggressions from well-meaning white liberals rather than more over attacks from ill-intentioned would-be Klansmen. The point is this: I long ago dispensed with trying to figure out whether people are racist, which is very hard, and instead now I focus much more on whether a given action is racist. Has someone performed a racist act? Well-intentioned people can perform racist acts—even DiAngelo concedes that she sometimes makes mistakes. We all have blind spots and can do things that help perpetuate white supremacy. Even, sometimes Black people like, say, Kanye.
When Kanye was merely supporting Donald Trump and wearing his neo-Klan hood hat, that was bad enough. But now he has gone a long step farther: he is conducting a “Presidential campaign” and fighting to get on the ballot in several states and succeeding in some. He will be on the ballot in Colorado and Oklahoma and has a chance to appear on several others (though he has missed his chance in North Carolina, New Mexico, Texas, Michigan, Florida, Indiana, and Wisconsin). This is an effort, by Republican operatives, to use him to siphon Black votes away from Joe Biden. So he is not trying to become President, he is working to help re-elect Trump as a sortof electoral blocker. This makes him a powerful agent of white supremacy, a solider in its war to stay in power. He is hoping to effectively disenfranchise Black voters, to give them a place to send their vote that won’t block Trump’s chance to win again. This is racist behavior on a grand scale. Kanye would probably tell you that he loves Black people and surely has many Black friends and is a central part of modern Black pop culture so it may seem strange to think of him as racist but his actions in this Presidential race on behalf of Trump are consciously meant to help Trump and thus to perpetuate white supremacy. Kanye is like Trump’s Stephen just at a much larger level.
Kim you better get your man.
Toward A Black VP
On the eve of Biden announcing his VP choice it feels increasingly certain to me that he will choose a Black woman. There are always ways of signaling who is no longer in the running—Amy Klobuchar didn’t drop out all on her own—and for the Biden campaign to have multiple Black women hanging in the wind for so long only to choose a white woman would seem particularly cruel. For a campaign that seems intent on coming across as decent and dignified and risk-averse and not offensive to anyone, I would be surprised if they skipped a chance to add a sense of history to their ticket—the first Black female VP gives the ticket a sheen and a purpose that no white woman could add.
Surely the Biden campaign is aware that there are large numbers of voters who now say a Black VP is important to them. Recent polling of voters in key swing states by my friends Karen Finney and Cornell Belcher found 60% of Millennial and Gen Z voters said it was important for Biden to pick a Black woman as his running mate and a majority of Black and brown women and a plurality of white women and college-educated women said it was important that a Black woman be chosen. It appears likely that this glass ceiling will be broken which is valuable and important in part because Black women have long been the spine of the Democratic party. No demographic shows up as completely for one party as Black women do for Dems. They are the major reason why Black voters tend to be the deciders in the Democratic primary. To finally elevate a Black woman to the #2 job in the country will be a powerful symbol.
Who will it be? It sounds like Biden has narrowed the Black women in his search to four—Congresswoman Val Demmings, Ambassador Susan Rice, Congresswoman Karen Bass, and Senator Kamala Harris. (It appears as though Stacey Abrams is out of the running even though she would be an amazing, inspiring, powerful choice. If it were Governor Abrams in this race she would probably be very hard to avoid.) The only candidate in this group who would make me lose my mind in anger and pull out my hair is Demmings. In the year of BLM it would be tone deaf and offensive to put a 27 year police officer and former police chief on the ticket. There are no good cops and bad cops, there is a system of policing that all cops must conform to that makes them the pawns of white supremacy and Demmings was fully invested in that system. She is the only candidate who would force me to seriously consider not voting. I would feel abandoned by the Democratic party. I would welcome Susan Rice, though in this strange campaign environment it could be tough to nominate someone who has never run for office. Also voters know nothing of her politics. Is she moderate? Progressive? She would cause Fox to go back into Benghazi apoplexy but I don’t think that would cost Biden a single voter and as a general matter I think it’s important that Biden and Dems in general avoid the notion of ‘Don’t do X because Trump or Fox will say…’ Trump and Fox are not honest brokers, they will lie about Biden’s positions (fact check: he’s not in favor of defunding the police) and being overly worried about what Trump or Fox will say puts them in the position of deciding who Dems are. California Congresswoman Karen Bass would be a powerful choice—she’s the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and a former Civil Rights activist and an ER physician’s assistant so she’s deeply conversant in two of the core issues of the year. She seems inoffensive but she fades in the shadow of Senator Kamala Harris. The public caterwauling of Senator Chris Dodd, a member of Biden’s VP choosing committee, tells me that Harris is leading the internal argument and Dodd is searching for any way to stop her. A good VP for Biden will be known to most of the country—in a year where the campaign feels all but frozen, introducing someone new will be hard. Harris is already a household name. A good VP for Biden will be perceived as ready to be President on Day One as well as ready in 2024. No one doubts that the Senator is ready. A good VP for Biden will be able to publicly attack Trump in ways that Biden cannot or will not. Out of all of the VP candidates, Harris is best suited to verbally stick knives into Trump with a smile. She can prosecute the case against him in a smart, classy way that lets Biden keep his hands clean. Biden’s campaign seems focused on how to woo Republicans who are on the ledge and make them feel good about voting for him without feeling like hypocrites. That’s why he’s more tepid in his attacks on Trump than many on the left want him to be. He wants to create a permission structure for people on the right to feel like they can vote for him without feeling like they made a mistake in 2016. Harris is best able to attack Trump and let Biden continue to play the nice guy.
You may be saying, wait, you’re ok with Harris the prosecutor but not Demmings the cop? Isn’t that hypocritical? It may be to some but I see a difference—prosecutors may work closely with police, translating their work into justice system, but the cops are on the street killing us with their hands. But there are Black people who dismissed Harris in the primary as a cop and refused to consider her candidacy.
Ultimately, I suspect this mini-primary will be decided by one superdelegate: Barack Obama. His will surely be the most important opinion outside of Biden’s own and I suspect that this give Harris an edge because Obama has been friends with Harris for a long time. He’s obviously close to Susan Rice as well, which may be why she’s gotten this far in the race, but at this point I struggle to see how Biden doesn’t choose Harris.
Either way, this is a victory for the Black women who have taken care of the Democratic party for so many years.
Wap Is FIRE FLAMES
I listened to the new Cardi B x Megan Thee Stallion song about 20 times in a row and still wanted more. I think the race for Song of the Summer may be over even though the Savage Remix is still in HEAVY rotation in my car because my daughter and I both love it. She’s 11 so she won’t be listening to Wap for at least 7 years. I need a remix with Lil Kim, City Girls, Saweetie, Mulatto, and Trina on it.
Is that ugly ass wife of yours white, or just Jewish toure? My sex pest lil nigga?
Bear with me a moment. This my own cry of fury and rage. I just listened to your latest podcast with Danielle. I am o a fanboy lol. This is far longer, dystopic and stream of consciousness than I intended, but then, I’ve never been accused of conciseness lol.
Below is a RANNT OF EPIC PROPORTION, and in two parts. As I sat inside the Donald’s head, looking at the world though eyes of madness, especially in the fragmented inhabitance of Trumps increasingly unhinged, “First Person” spew of disorganized cognition, I hope you both burn with rage at the Jeffery Dahmer-like personality we Americans with our Russian partners, elected.
And it IS enraging. But I also hope you find some Gallows humor. I was initially aiming for tongue-in-cheek parody, but really.. it just came ot frighteningly insane. As Rachel say: buckle up!
Yours,
Scott Mudd
PART ONE:
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Heya Toure! I sooo wanna say it with Love From tha Bayoux.. Too-Rayy.. can I get Heell Yes lol.
In any case, I am listening to two brilliant, confident, self-aware podcasters just ... riffing’!
About, }Kamela just.. RIII-IIIPS their face off! Hah! So true.
Sign me up as OG Kamela Fan-Club, Dues Payer #3, after you and the equally brilliant, and Linguistically Liberated, fellow AM Joy Traveller AND Poised Warrior Princess of tha’ Resistance, Danielle “Mutha’Fuckn’” MOOOO-DEEEEEE!!! (..imagine.. 25,000 screaming fans, at Peak Cheer and CLIMBING through the first Deep Gutteral on the Dan.., climbing in pitch and volume as the we the Mutha’Fuckn’, and nailing the MOOOOOO-DEEEeeeee..)
Hell Yes.
Anyway, distracted lol..
First time listener, call me IMPRESSED.. HE-eeeellll YE-EEEESSSS!!! Heh.
I’m listening right now and you had just heard, “Black Male Privilege,” and now y’all R talkin’ bout Hillary, basketball, fame - Time Dilation Worm-Holing, and how it seemingly affects different people, public figures facing their haters lol, differently.
By the way, Danielle WILL be in tears, for all those things and more.. but asker to consider this: (insert profound pause here..) BTW, I love her SPICY VOCABULARY LOLOLOL. I’m there lol.
-She will be feeling the ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY LIBERATING release of the FOUR-MUTHA’FUCKN’-YEAR-LONG STRAN-GU-LA-TION we have ALL, been or even to endure.
Perhaps the most affectingly-ish affected are the WOMEN-OF-AMERICA. Beautiful. Strong. And reality-shocked into a type of suspended time. Frozen in the early morning of the dawning cruelty of November 4th, 2016. Stunned in disbelieving horror at our new, shared reality. RELEASE from this nightmarish Hellscape Donald Fucking Trump has transposed from his shattered, disorganized, fever dream of a Trump idyllic we are ALL soul-shackled to this past three-and-a-half years of unending sorrow and hot rage at the apparent helplessness of the situation we have found ourselves in. And the Republic Senatorial Guard that abets, succors, and stonewalls our escape from is dystopia THEY have built for us.
-(like Republic Senatorial-Style, Stockholm-Syndome-Like prisoners held in the Mad Hatter’s garden TEA-BAG Party..)-
..to ENDURE for YEARS!!! WITHOUT AIR!!! TRAPPED!! like Flies In Amber, booing slowly, so slowly, MAD!!! Trapped on the other side of the looking glass, force-fed madness and the Sewage Which, Tourette’s-Like, Fountains like radioactive cloud of Cesium as if from Chernobyl itself, deadly, toxic, salting the burned Earth behind its corrosive passage, destroying in months what took hundreds of years, and the blood from all STILL SEEK a better world, a kinder, more humane society in which to raise our families BETTER than that in which E were raised. A society in which we can build ourselves, our children, our institutions, our discourse, our politics, our protections from abuses, and our SOCIETY, within which we can BUILD BACK, BETTER space where our HUMANITY can flourish and grow healthy.
But not while we are forced to endure this entrapment. This bile. This spew. This MADNESS we are all chained to, like our reality has transmogrified into a Cthulhian nightmare from which WE CANNOT PINCH OURSELVES AWAKE.
-AND NOW THE, FAR WORSE, DEEP DIVING, PART 2:
___________________________________________
-(aka, the Republic Steering Group in the House..) by Chief Fifty-Two Card Pick-Up and his Left- and RightWingNut- Ball-Sac “HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, AMERICA, I WOULD NEVER MAKE YOU WAIT TOO LONG BEFORE I SHUT DOWN GOVERNMENT WHILST I LUCY-THA-FOOTBALL THAT FLAMING LIBERAL, CORPSE-LIKE, SOUL-CRUSHING, KENTUCKY-HATING, WAAAAY TOO ENTHUSIASTIC, BIG-SPENDING, EMO-FUCKTARD, ..”LEADER”..(?).. Our Very Own.., “MOSCOW MITCH” MI-IICCKKK-CONNNNN-EEEELLLLLLlllllll.....-
..held prisoner to the vital and empathic “New, Seven Highly Habit-Forming for Dissociative-Personality AFF-ective, Sorta-If-U-Squint-Resembles-A-Relatively-Upright, Shambler-of-Shambolic, Hominid-ish, North Korean Dictatorial-Pool-ish, Suspiciously OrangeAF, Smells-Badly-Big-TYME!!!-Almost-As-If-Of-GreasyAF-Cheeseburger-y-ish, Pay-You-No-Nevermind-Because-It’s-An-Upside-Down-Bible-ish-y, And, I-Think-I-Must-Say-Though-I-Never-Get-No-#FakeNews!-Credit-For-My-Very-Soon-And-Very-Strongly-ish-Injection-Of-Performative, Classy, And-Really-Really-Very-Very-Stongly-ish and Bigly-ish-First-President-Ever!-Very-Strong-Strong-Stru-Stru-Stru-ooonnngly-Presentation-Of-The-So-Presidential-That-WHEN-I-do-It-Super-Super-Very-Strong-RussiaRussiaRussia-HOAX!!!-You-Have-To-Understand-They-Love-It!-Like..-No-Other-He-Rating!-Like-You-Wouldn’t-Believe!-The-Ratings!-When-I-Do-All-The-Thumb-Sucking-Because-I’ll-Sue!-He-Was-A-Great-..great-TOUGH!-Man-Who-Loved-With-The-The-Blacks!-They-Really-Srongly!-LOVED!-Him-My-Father. But With The Thumb-Sucking I do To Get the Rating, Just So You Understand!-If-Wasn’t..For.. Me! you understand, The Ratings! I call it.. “The Failing White Administration!!!” ..
BRANDING! I’m, (just so you understand!) very good with the thumb sucking because, you understand, with the Blacks! Nasty, Ungreatful people, the Blacks.. They Love Me! And I said to them, and still do! you understand..
“What..!, do you have to lose!”
So I have, my..LOVELY MAN! Mark Meadows.. they call him.. “The BURN IT ALL DOWN, ‘Cause, Since I’m a ‘MOUTH BREATHING WASTE OF THE DIVINE SPARK’ They Love Me in Baltimore! Man-Ly-ish, Sorta-ish..Yu”
—That’s what they call him! Not me!- no, I call him, “Mark ‘My Man!” Meadows,” The Great Obtuse-ing Bowel Obstructer! I call him. you, he came to, on his knees, just so you UNDERSTAND.., and he came BEGGING to me, CRYING.. he said, MISTER PRESIDENT, they call me.. can you believe it? they are always begging begging begging! What I wouldn’t give for Nancy to Be My Secretary, with the Glasses, you understand, I’d give up the LOT OF’EM for one good day with MY Nancy.. just so you understand! PELOSI !!! they call her.. they’re So Afraid of Her.. not ME ! just so you understand! And MITCH! What a useless appendage of flesh HE turned out to be. He’s just, so you understand..DEAD! Like..nobody’s ever seen before.. they call me, begging, you understand, “MISTER PRESIDENT! they call me heh.. MISTER PRESIDENT! they call me, just so you understand, like.. they’ve never seen a CORPSE before, Running the Senate! These people are nuts! They’re, supposedly Grown-ish, so you understand, BEGGING! and that’s OK! Really, I LIKE IT WHEN BEG! I say, “More Strongly! please.. like Nancy would do.. SHE doesn’t beg! but if she DID! she would.. do it.. right. Strongly..Uvery Strong. With the Glasses! and.. I would Suck My Thumb..like..a baby! and my Nancy, she would smile, very..strong.. strongly! Land then she would go get my deal.. like ..I JUST WANT A DEAL! She.l NANCY! wouldn’t come back without a DEAL... like, you’ve never SEEN before.. and SHE would let me kill my daughter’s husband.. he’d a Jew! can you believe that! My.. Hott.. I men come on! Look at her! I’D dye her! Who wouldn’t? And when you’re famous, they let you, Ivanka ALWAYS lets me.. grab her by the.. She lets get away ANYTHING I want to Nancy..
Is it my nap-time yet? How long has t been since I’ve been tested? Are you sick? I thought I heard you coughing.. grab u by the bails and COUGH I said! I don’t CARE what My Generals Say! My NANCY, NANCY, NANCY!! makes them do it..
Are We? ...there yet? Gotta go to K-Mart.. my Father says I’m an EXCELLENT driver.. Gotta go to.. NANCY! Very Strongly. I denied it, Dad! They don’t know I did it! I was very very strong in my denial. They can’t tell when I’m lying! Cause I have NO SHAME! I’m a KILLER, Dad. Just lie you taught me! They’re all so weak! LOSERS!!! Hey do they believe me dad? YOU know I’m lying every time I speak. EVERY TIME! You’re right, dad. They’re all such LOSERS! SCUM! SUCKERS!
Have you seen Ivanka dad? She’s HOTT! You can have her dad! I’ll her down for you.