Ok wait. I know the title is really weird, but I promise you, this makes sense.
Yesterday, for reasons unknown (actually, that’s not true, we know why) racist trolls came out of the woodwork to completely disrespect Leslie Jones on a level that's usually only heard of on a site like 4Chan. Except this was Twitter. It got to a point that Leslie, who usually blocks these trolls, decided to leave all of the comments open for all to read so they could see the levels of disgusting acts these pissants were throwing her way. It was literally non-stop post after post of nigger this, nigger that, pictures of apes, calling her ugly; the worst and yet the most uninspired vitriol at the same time.
It got to the point where the hashtag #LoveforLeslieJ was made so supporters of Leslie could counteract these attacks and show love. Now for one, this is directly related to Leslie starring in the Ghostbusters remake that came out this past Friday. Secondly, Leslie has been dealing with beauty & race issues her whole life, so the names and hurtful comments made yesterday were nothing she's not seen before. But I can imagine the onslaught of them in one day was highly unexpected (special shotout to Twitter's mods for not doing jack shit about it either).
Honestly, who can prepare for that shit? I know I can't. I would have flipped out, married a rich white woman, and gone Silent Bob & Jay on all of their bitch asses (knock knock nigga, come catch deez hands!). However the reason I bring up Leslie & the RNC is because of one Sheriff David Clarke from Wisconsin, who presented a rousing speech, if you will, on Donald Trumps' behalf last night, which got me to thinking after the entire convention gave him a standing ovation: this America always wanted a Black person to look a certain way, speak a certain way, complete a certain task, and embrace a certain ideology in order to be their friend.
We've been down this road so many times. Uncle Tom. Uncle Ruckus. Shucking & jiving. Whether we want to believe it or not, Sheriff Clarke is clearly not the only Black person loving some orange Tang in their life right now. However given his interview with Don Lemon last night that went south REAL QUICK and his overall finger pointing at Black Lives Matters for anti-police sentiments while tooting his Blue Lives Matter horn for all to hear, it all references a specific sentiment. Imagine if Leslie was Omarosa, Trump's new African American Outreach connect. If she still starred in Ghostbusters but was doing Trump's bidding, would anyone have come at her neck with all that fuck shit on her TL? Doubt it. If anything…it probably would have been some of US doing the shit talking. I'm already taking Leslie being a woman into account, but chocolate toned, tall, deep voiced, with clearly natural hair is A LOT more than White America can handle in regards to how they like their Black women to look. Yet I know full and well if she could be their puppet, it would be nothing but cheers and smiles from many of these same naysayers.
In my mind, this all just brings up three points I need to remember at all times
1) Clarke clearly has an open door policy with his asshole now that he's about to be a wonderful addition to the Republican Puppet collection;
2) Leslie's clap back game is scrooooooooong. You can't take shots at a comedian and forget what those fingers can and will do; and
3) The division between Black folks is getting more significant as time goes on and we aren't addressing it quickly enough.
If you saw the RNC, we are all in agreement that these folks love spewing some hate. If you viewed Leslie's TL, we are all in agreement these folks love spewing some hate. So now we need either find a way to break past this ridiculous amount of stupidity, or just hire Tommy from Power as our official White connect who aint taking shit from anyone when you dis the squad.
Joel Philip is 30-something from the land of bullets and blueberry muffins known as Brooklyn, N.Y. He specializes in being awkward, daydreams of being Mr. Robot and tries to live the theme of Toy Story 3 every day of his life.