MSNBC: White People Are Too Stupid to Understand Will Smith’s Slap
Remember the days when racism was bad?
By Robert Spencer
Remember the days when racism was bad? Those days are long gone, baby, unless you hold to the currently fashionable fiction that only white people can be racist at all. If, on the other hand, you still live in the real world, you know that everyone can be racist, and that racism is making a strong comeback in American society today. That’s not because Bull Connor has unleashed his dogs once again and Lester Maddox is back waving his axe handle; instead, it’s because it has become acceptable in woke culture to bash white people in ways that, if any other group were being discussed in the same terms, would ruin careers and shut down networks. But racism against white folks is not just acceptable today; it’s a sure-fire means of career advancement.
On MSNBC’s The Cross Connection on Sunday, the show’s host, Tiffany Cross, asserted that white people didn’t understand why black people were telling them not to comment upon Will Smith’s still-resounding slap of Chris Rock in front at the Oscars last week. Her guest, TheGrio columnist Michael Harriot, then claimed that it was “hard to explain to a white person what’s the difference between an open-handed slap and a punch.”
Oh, pick me, sir! Pick me! An open-handed slap is, well, uh, a slap with the open hand, and a punch is delivered with the closed fist. The slap is generally considered to be a gesture of profound contempt, but somewhat less aggressive than a punch. Now, I’m white and all that, and I’m heartily sorry for that, but was my answer correct?
Cross, however, didn’t even consider the possibility that some white people might know what she was talking about, declaring that “they,” that is, those silly, stupid, benighted whites, “consider it all violent.”
Well, yes. That’s because it is all violent. But according to Cross, idiot whites are missing the fact that there was “nuance to what happened.” She then launched into a bizarre story that was apparently meant to illustrate why those who have the misfortune to be white should say nothing about the slap. “I will try to put this in context for our white fellow countrymen as best I can. And really, truly, black America, there’s a commonality amongst us all. And if we went to a white person’s home, and it was their family dinner, and we were sitting at the table, and the mother hauled off and slapped the father. And everybody at the table has an opinion. You know, the sister is like, ‘Mom, you always do this.’ And the brother is like, ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this.’ And Dad is like, ‘You’re terrible.’ If I weigh in as the guest in this home and I say, ‘Yeah, you guys are terrible.’ Everybody’s like, ‘I’m sorry. When did you get an opinion? This is our family table.’” There’s a commonality among us, she said, but then the story she told emphasized that there was no commonality among us. Cross then added, “That’s what this moment felt like for many of us. And there’s a nuance to what happened that we should get into.”
Well, all right, let’s get into it. If one is a guest at anyone’s home and a fight breaks out, the idea that one must be quiet and say nothing about it is as strange as the breakout of the fight in the first place. Dinner guests generally engage in conversation with the others who are present; they aren’t expected to be quiet and respectfully await permission to speak. What’s more, the Academy Awards are not exactly a private setting like someone’s family dinner table. The whole world saw the slap, and the idea that one segment of the population is not allowed to talk about it because of the race of that segment of the population is exactly the two-tiered system of rights that was the hallmark of the Jim Crow era.
Imagine if anyone on TV had said that anything was “hard to explain to a black person.” The person who said it would be out of a job within minutes and would be the object of scorn and derision from the entire world. Meanwhile, the comment itself would be used as evidence of an ugly recrudescence of racism in America, which would be discussed ad nauseum by hyper-serious television anchors on news feature shows.
But Tiffany Cross and the rest of the media elites constantly tell us that black people cannot be racist. What this means in practice is that when black people are racist, they simply don’t see it. It doesn’t exist. It has as much media presence as Hunter Biden’s laptop before that item became useful to the establishment.
Even when they’re racist themselves, the elites don’t seem to see what they’re doing. But we do.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons