A person of colonizing descent recently explained why it’s perfectly reasonable for him to play a black character on a new Netflix series, citing the fact that he raps, listens to black comedians, sponsors black youths and, most importantly, has an “urban background.”
Travis Turner, the noticeably melanin-deficient Canadian rapper known as “Little T,” took time out of his busy schedule of gentrifying hip-hop to clarify why it’s fine that he’s voicing a black character on the Netflix animated series Spy Kids: Mission Critical.
When a TMZ reporter asked Little T if he was worried about backlash from the black community for his new role, the gentrifying thespian explained how he’d acquired his black pass.
“You know what? If they want, they can say whatever,” began the Christopher Columbus of cartoons before listing the reasons why a 30-year-old rapper with relatively little acting experience was the obvious choice to play a black preteen:
I have a track with Dub C right now. I have a track with Snoop coming out. I actually come from like a urban background. I come from like ... I’ve lived in motels ...
What I’m trying to say is I relate to the urban community, OK? ... I sponsor black kids. I work with Day One. I work with Dub C. I work with Snoop. I think right now social media is actually dividing us.
I grew up on Chris Rock, Chris Tucker. People making fun of race.
Young Colonizer went on to explain that “if people want to make it like a black and a white thing, then ... it’s gonna be that.”
You might expect me to go into a diatribe about the recurring caucastic tendency to ask why “we always have to make everything about race” whenever wypipo are the beneficiaries of white entitlement.
Some might even expect me to make this an example of how Mayo sapiens get the privilege of sidestepping the issue of race whenever whiteness chooses to be all-embracing—to the detriment of more qualified or more talented black people in the entertainment industry.
I bet some people think I’m going to use this incident as an analogy to explain why “colonizer” is an apt definition of someone who believes they can move in and occupy spaces and make them their own.
I was just about to do all of that when I realized there was a bigger and more important issue raised by Lil Blackface the trap rapper:
Maybe I’m not black.
I’ve never made a track with Dub-C. No one in the all-black community where I was raised has a song coming out that features Snoop Dogg. I called my mother and she told me that she has never lived in a motel, and neither she nor I have the slightest idea who Day One is.
In fact, I grew up in a small town in South Carolina, and The Root’s Monique Judge once told me at a staff meeting that I sound “country as fuck.” I don’t even have an “urban” background.
Apparently, Travis Turner is blacker than I am.
Think about it. If someone told you about a dude named Michael Harriot whose favorite show is Jeopardy and who constantly feuds with Umar Johnson, would you think he was black? Or would you say the black guy was a rapper named “Little T”?
His name is motherfucking Travis!
But what sealed the deal was when Canadian, Caucasian 2Pac put on his vocal blackface and began freestyling on the sidewalk in the TMZ clip.
He’s definitely blacker than me.
But you know what’s the worst thing about this whole white 2Chainz wannabe (I call him 2Shackles) who has no qualifications to play a black role except for the fact that white people get to do whatever they damn well please?
I bet Netflix offered him more than Mo’Nique.