The Root’s Clapback Mailbag: Something New Every Day

I need your help.

While browsing through the emails, tweets and DMs for the clapback mailbag, I learn a lot about myself. This week I discovered that I am involved with a lot of extracurricular agendas. Here is the list:

• The gay agenda
• The leftist agenda
• Black Lives Matter terrorists
• The “real racists”
• Globalists
• The Democratic Party plantation
• The anti-white movement
• Black supremacy
• The Plot to destroy the black family
• Antifa
• Disrespecting the troops
• Obama’s agenda
• Antisemitism
• Working for the Jews
• The Liberal elite

In order to help manage my time, I need you guys to help me pick out the top three agendas and send them to me.

For some reason, this first DM was addressed to me even though I didn’t write the article that started this furious idiotic debate, I only retweeted it:

To: Michael Harriot
From: King of Kings

Why do you work for a publication that push for the destruction of the black family? If u really cared about black ppl, you’d stop promoting the homoSSeXXXual agenda that is making our men soft and feminine. Are you really for us or are you working for them?

Dear sirs,

That article was written by The Root’s social media editor, Corey Townsend, who I was shocked to learn was gay.

For a long time, I thought people who talked about the “gay agenda” were stupid. Plus, I don’t recall how old I was when I decided to become a heterosexual, but I don’t think it was a parade-based decision. In fact, I distinctly remember going to a Christmas parade when I was 7 years old and still thinking Santa Claus was lame. I’ve asked my mother and she can’t recall the day when she sat me down in the kitchen and helped me choose between penis and vagina for the rest of my life.

I was wrong.

It turns out that there actually is a gay agenda. Corey was nice enough to actually provide me with the top ten items on the agenda which has been moved and properly seconded in last month’s Gay Agenda executive meeting:

1. Brunch: Per Corey, “It’s the most important meal of the gay.”
2. Destroy the black family: By allowing children to go to parades and choosing to love whomever they wish.
3. Turn people gay: Everyone knows that exposing children to homosexuals is how people determine their sexuality. I thank God every day that no one ever watched The Cosby Show or we’d have a country full of serial rapists. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.
4. Normalize homosexuality: This one is still unclear because people always say that seeing gay people on TV, in schools or washing their hands in bathrooms will “normalize” their behavior. I don’t quite know how this works. If this were true, black people everywhere would be eating unseasoned chicken, dancing off-beat and wearing running shoes with khakis.
5. Pretend heterosexual people are cool: I’m pretty sure this is a typo. Everyone knows Taylor Swift is cooler than Janelle Monae.
6. Make the Hoteps Angry: By doing gay shit like existing.
7. “Lifetstyling”: I don’t quite get this one either. But I have often heard people rationalize their homophobia by explaining that they don’t hate gay people, they “just don’t agree with their lifestyle,” which I’ve never understood. Is sexual preference a lifestyle? I’m beginning to wonder if random internet niggas agree with my heterosexual lifestyle.
8. A late brunch: The homosexual agenda is very brunch-centric.
9. Be invisible: Because heterosexual people are insecure egomaniacs who think that all gay people want to fuck them even though scores of straight people wouldn’t fuck them even if the Constitution, the Bible and Beyoncé commanded it.
10. Werk: You better.

I hope this clears things up.

Usually, I know which articles will stir up our white base. But this week, I was totally taken off guard by how many messages I received about an article on NFL hopeful and white man, Nick Bosa.

Here is a selection which I have decided to respond to.

From: Jake
To: Michael Harriot
Subject: Tried to read your article

I attempted to read your article on how terrible society is concerning black activism in professional football. I choked pretty quick. The difference between Bosa and kapernick and Reed has nothing to do with their color.

It has everything to do with their motives and the direction they took in their act of social discourse.Kapernick and Reed are not oppressed, they’re millionaires protesting against the standard for which all Americans should be honored to be living in, the USA.

There are many ways to protest, they decided to take the way that brought attention to themselves and not the issues the claimed to be protesting for. From the overall everyday Americans point of view they are hypocrites.Tell them to get up off their deadbeat asses and do something other than take a knee during the national anthem.

Stop drawing attention to yourselves and focus the attention on the issues.

Unroll,they do main stream America will continue to believe they are selfish rich boys

Dear Jake,

I’m sorry to hear about your difficulties with reading. I can see from your tweets and letters, that your efforts to improve your literacy have not been successful; like many white people, you sometimes infer an unseen “all” in sentences where is not included. Colin Kaepernick has never said that he was personally oppressed.

What he said was: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” and, “I am not looking for approval. I have to stand up for people that are oppressed.” And, although you claim that they have not brought attention to the issues, for two seasons, nearly every sports, news and entertainment outlet has talked about the issue. Not to mention that the NFL donated nearly $100 million dollars to social justice causes. Would you be even writing to a black dude on the internet if it wasn’t for Colin Kaepernick?

I like how you insist that Colin Kaepernick caused a distraction by simply sitting silently on the sideline and never saying anything until someone specifically asked him about it, but Nick Bosa wasn’t causing a distraction by ranting on the internet for the world to see.

But Jake, I do want to thank you for opening my eyes to one thing I have never thought about. With all of the privilege that white people enjoy, I have never really thought about the one thing that your inherent entitlement has stripped away from you:

The ability to give a fuck.

As you explained, Colin Kaepernick isn’t oppressed, therefore you find it unfathomable that he could care about someone else’s oppression. According to you, because he is a millionaire who plays in the NFL, why should he be worried about anyone else?

I get it now. This explains everything.

This explains why white America sat silently through 250 years of slavery even though they knew it was wrong. The lack of white fucks to give is why there wasn’t a backlash against the people who bombed churches and beat children. It explains why they laugh at racist jokes and herald a system that keeps black people from voting. It explains how they can drive past poor black schools and think it doesn’t affect them but will clutch their purses when they are alone in an elevator with a negro male. It explains why white people can call the police on black people who make them feel “uncomfortable” even after they’ve seen the disproportionate number of dead bodies in the street riddled with bullet holes from police-issued niggerstoppers.

For years, I thought white people were racist. It turns out that they don’t hate black people. They just don’t give a fuck what happens to anyone but themselves ...

And, of course, puppies.

Thank you, Jake, for teaching me.

Here are three more on how much I hate white people including one who commented on an article about the IRS:

Name: Jeff
To: Michael Harriot
Subject: Black..black...black

It’s obvious you only like someone or something if it’s black....you hater

From: Chris
To: Michael Harriot

I’m assuming you are the same Michael Harriot who wrote the Root article on Joey Bosa.

So, let me get this right....when race-baiting leftists like yourself force your own political ideology into sports you love forcing conservatives to tolerate it.

But when we express our own failed ideology you are so intolerant that you believe that a conservative must all be doing it because you think they hate black people.

Let me ask you a question, do you hate white people? And do especially hate black people who happen to be conservative?

How diverse are the people you hang out with? Dude. You need some conservative friends. Or white friends. Get to know people who you claim knowing so well.

Tolerance = loving others.

Warmly,

Chris

Guys:

I don’t hate white people. Some of my best friends are black people whose best friends are white (probably). In fact, here’s a list of white things that I enjoy:

• Mayonaise
• Game of Thrones
• The missionary position
• Not being killed by police
• White people (not all white people)
• Seinfeld
• Hiking
• Asking waiters at foreign restaurants how spicy the food is and then saying, “I’ll just have the soup.”
• Soup
• Owning things (except people)
• Announcing that I voted for Obama

Finally, here’s some from people who explained how I am the real racist by being even more racist:

From: Douglas

To: Michael Harriot
Subject: Racism is a one-way street

So Bosa is a bad boy because he doesn’t think and talk the way black people expect all white people should think and talk. At least he devoted his life to football. You, on the other hand, have devoted your life to hate. You hate everthing white —- Bosa, Trump, me.

P.s. Cracker is an offensive word used to negatively describe white people. Nigger is an offensive word used to negatively describe a class of predominately black people. A cracker is a cracker because their skin is white. A nigger is a nigger because —- well you already know how this ends.

Two things:

1. I haven’t devoted my life to hate, Douglas. I’ve mainly devoted my life to trying to taking out the trash and making sure my kids will one day be successful and accomplished enough that white people will see them and be as mad as you are when you wrote this letter.
2. Cracker is derived from an especially brutal slave-owner or slave supervisor who was the “whip cracker.” So not all white people are crackers. Just you, Doug. Just you.