I’ve Got A Great Idea!!

It’s a really, really good one white folks. Are you ready?
Here goes:
NEXT TIME your favorite comedian or illustrator or “provocateur” (a word I loathe) goes too far and screws up with people of color and marginalized people… instead of trying to tell us that we don’t understand “satire”, perhaps consider shutting up. That’s right. You always have the option to just shut up. You also have the option to listen. Or you can just keep talking until your people of color friends can’t remember why they’re friends with you in the first place. You can always do that too. There is perhaps nothing I consider more insidious than white folks talking down to people of color and insisting we cannot understand their “superior” witty humor when we say “no, no actually you’re part of the problem”. It goes hand in hand with “but we’re you’re ally how dare you criticize us”, which definitely showed up on multiple occasions in this Tina Fey debacle.
Tina, Tina, Tina. I liked you. I did. And I’m not a firm believer in throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But who did you think this sketch would benefit? Did you actually take a moment to think about the message you were sending and how it would effect people of color? Because I don’t think you did. If you had, you would have known your Sally Hemings joke would have gone over like a deflated balloon. (She was a 14 year old child. How old is your daughter? Exactly. Icky.) Because here’s the thing. White ladies don’t deserve satire and funnies right now. If it hasn’t worked in well, the last two hundred years, it most likely isn’t working in 2017. 53% of white women voted for Donald Trump, which means if you’re a white lady, you quite possibly know another white lady that voted for the man who stared at the eclipse and clearly doesn’t believe in science let alone racism (which is super awesome when it comes to women’s rights and all … I’d be willing to guess a person doesn’t believe that staring at a solar eclipse will damage their eyes, doesn’t actually understand menstral cycles). But I digress.
Who was that sketch for? Because if white women don’t know by now that their inaction helps NO ONE (and has definitely gotten us all in this mess), do you really think pithy satire is going to inspire the masses to get out and storm the streets for the sake of others? If you believe that, would you be interested in buying this bridge? Or a pussy hat. You know like those millions that descended upon DC for one day and have yet to be seen with such force to show up for the causes that benefit people of color.
But on thread after thread I saw the same thing. White folks assuming that anyone who didn’t LIKE Fey’s message of “do nothing” are too “stupid” to understand it’s brilliance! White folks putting themselves through all sorts of mental gymnastics to insist that people of color got to have no say in what was appropriate for fighting OUR oppression and what was not. White women going even so far as antagonizing black men Rose Armitage style with lines like,
“ I’m sorry, am I not being sexy enough to be nice to any more?”
Listen here Kim. You insisting that a black man who disagrees with you clearly wants you is a play right out of the Oppressive And Very Dangerous White Woman handbook. It is gross, gross, grossedy, gross, gross. And this is the path you took over a piece of poorly done satire? Well you just drive right off that cliff and take your bullshit with you.
Announcement white folks: It’s not that we DIDN’T GET IT. WE GOT IT AND THOUGHT IT WAS SHIT.
Because y’all have been staying home all along. Because Time magazine and the New Yorker are making some of the most brilliant and poetic cover art of all time and if that won’t inspire y’all to get off your asses and storm the street, than a comedy sketch about white women Marie Antoinetting probably isn’t going to actually move anything either. If anything it’ll give you a few cuddles and allow you to feel like,
“Oh hey, that’s me! Other white women feel that way too now I don’t feel so bad. Cool, cool!”
Because if seeing Tamir Rice’s lifeless body didn’t inspire you to storm the streets, how on Earth will a Saturday Night Live sketch get you off your butt? Because if witnessing the Standing Rock protests juxtaposed with witnessing the Bundy ranch felons, taking which doesn’t belong to them and threatening the Feds doesn’t inspire a rage in you potent enough to change a system which will hurt us all … how will a SNL sketch help you to see the light??
Don’t worry. We know. It won’t.
So hey, maybe instead of screaming at a person of color who tells you a sketch wasn’t funny or productive… maybe just go eat an entire fucking cake instead. Because we have better things to do with our time than listen to you tell us why you need satire to battle oppression.