Hey, bruh, do you have a minute?
Of course I do. You look concerned. Is something wrong?
I was just about to ask you the same question, bruh. Are you OK? I just saw a bunch of tweets that didn’t make sense. They were calling you racist, and they mentioned Toyotas, and something about The Tonight Show band and the place where you work. It really didn’t make sense, so I thought I’d come directly to you.
Oh, that? Yeah, Tucker Carlson is beefing with The Root for being racist against white people.
Wait, who is Tucker Carlson?
Tucker Carlson is a white man.
That’s all you got—he’s a white man?
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to minimize Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson is not just a white man; he’s the white man.
When you hear black people say, “The white man is a motherfucker,” they’re probably talking about Tucker Carlson. If you looked up “white man” in some dictionaries, there’s just a picture of Carlson. He’s such an unremarkable white man, the universe named him after a penis-hiding process. Tucker!
Everything about him screams white. He thinks he’s smarter than he really is. He pretends he’s not racist, but everyone knows he is. His face is always adorned with a Lord Petyr Baelish-like smirk that is a mixture of evil, arrogance and bitch-ass-ness. He has a show on Fox News even though he’s not especially interesting, good-looking or talented. He’s perfectly mediocre. There’s only one way to describe him:
Tucker Carlson is a white man.
But what does that have to do with you? Or The Root? Or racism. Or Corollas? I’m still confused.
That’s what I’m here for.
On Wednesday at 11:09 a.m., I received a perfectly mediocre email from the head booker at Tucker Carlson Tonight (notice the perfectly mediocre name of the show). They requested an interview, saying: “We often see your pieces in The Root, and we’d be interested in discussing many of the themes relating to race in our country that you often analyze.”
That seems perfectly mediocre. So you told them “yes”?
Well, as soon as I read the email, my “nigga senses” started tingling.
Your what?
My nigga senses. You see, there are many black people who possess a superherolike sense of detecting white fuckery from afar. Whenever I smell Caucasian shenanigans, I feel a tingling at the tips of my fingers and toes. Some people, including my doctor, think I should be tested for the gout, but trust me, it’s a superpower. It’s like Spider-Man’s spidey senses. When I first discovered them, I put in an application with the X-Men, but they haven’t called back. I know it’s because Wolverine be hating on me.
So what did you do when you felt the tingling?
I did what any smart black man should do: I asked a black woman—specifically, my editor-in-chief, Danielle Belton. I knew she would give me a thoughtful, well-reasoned, educated response.
And what did she say?
“Don’t do it. Issa trap.”
Those were her exact words. So I emailed the Tucker Carlson show with a keenly worded email detailing my hesitation to appear on the show. I think my response illustrated my feelings that I don’t think productive conversations about race can be had in four-minute segments. Furthermore, I know Fox News tries to include black people so it can make it seem like it’s not racist to its racist audience. I’m not saying that everyone who watches Fox News is a racist. I’m just saying that all racists watch Fox News.
I also think I perfectly outlined my recollection that the last time I was asked to appear on Fox News, on Laura Ingraham’s show, I was replaced by Tariq Nasheed after I declined. I believe my email succinctly summed up my apprehensions.
That’s dope. It must have been a long email. Can you read it to me?
No problem; I know it by heart. My email to Tucker Carlson Tonight read:
“Nah, fam. I’m good.”
Wow. So that’s why they’re mad? Because you didn’t come on the show?
No, it gets better. It turns out, my nigga senses were right. It was a trap. They wanted to lure me on the show to talk about why The Root hates white people so much. Check out these clips:
Basically, they wanted me to explain why it’s OK to be white.
Damn, that’s cold. But I still don’t understand what this has to do with Questlove, Black Thought or Priuses.
Well, Tucker Carlson decided that his viewers should boycott The Root and our sponsors. One of our sponsors is Toyota. So Carlson decided to do what Sean Hannity did when he convinced the dumb whites (my least favorite flavor of vanilla) to smash their Keurig coffee machines. But Fox News viewers are the people who voted for an alleged pedophile who rode a horse to the polls, so they aren’t as internet-savvy as you would think. So this happened:
Somewhere I imagine Black Thought is checking his Twitter feed and wondering what the hell is going on.
So are you upset that you are being painted as a racist?
Here’s the thing: Some people will say that I am a coward for not going on Carlson’s show to face him and defend myself. I have no need to explain myself, my writings or anything on The Root to a bunch of people whose minds won’t be changed in 40-second sound bites by a black guy they invited on so the host could paint him as anti-white anyway.
And why would I smear Tucker Carlson’s mediocre whiteness as racist?
I have written a lot of incendiary things about white people. I won’t shy away from that. I have called white people racist and made fun of their dancing skills, their potato salad and how often they shoot up schools. I created the Wypipo Awards and held an entire Wypipo Tournament to find the worst of the worst. But none of the articles Tucker Carlson listed were written by me!
He literally called a random black guy to explain why the works of another black guy were racist. Which. Is. Racist. But you know ... I guess we all write alike.
But is The Root racist against white people?
Dammit, man! You’re going to make me reveal the secret to our sauce. OK, I’ll reveal it, but make sure you don’t tell anyone. Here it is: No one at The Root hates white people. We hate racism. We are often called racists because of an old Southern saying: “A hit dog will holler.”
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
It means if you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, only the one who is hit will let out a yelp. The rest just go on about their business.
A woman once took umbrage with my portrayal of white people, called me a “black gangbanger” and asked me how that made me feel. I told her it did not bother me because I am not a gangbanger. I went about my business. Yet some white people are so racist that when we throw rocks at racism, they think we are targeting white people. They are hit dogs. That’s why they holler.
The white people hollering at Questlove and driving their Rav4s back to the Toyota dealership will never be killed because The Root racially profiled them. The Root has never sent Fox News viewers’ children to underfunded white schools. The Root doesn’t subject Carlson’s fans to longer prison sentences because they are white. The Root has never issued a travel ban against mediocre white boys or tried to deport the Caucasians who come to our country and take our jobs. But, to be fair, the entire staff at The Root wouldn’t mind if someone built a wall around Fox News, but we don’t have the funding.
And some of them, we suppose, are good people.
So how will you settle this?
We probably won’t. Historically, white people don’t have a long record of taking shit back. Plus, the idea of a hip-hop beef between Fox News and The Root seems like fun. I don’t know if Carlson is P. Diddy or Suge Knight in this scenario, but I bet Carlson won’t be talking that shit when I roll up with The Root staff and the X-Men in my used 4Runner.
So you don’t feel bad at all?
I’ll be honest. There was one small part of the clip that made me feel a little bad about this entire Caucasian kerfuffle: when Tucker Carlson looked into the camera and said this:
Attacking people on the basis of their race is wrong. That was the standard, and for a long time almost everybody in America believed it.
I won’t lie. My stomach is still sore from laughing so hard.