Pardon Me While I Clap Back at the Wall Street Journal’s Bullshit

If, perchance, one day, a team of white supremacist elves (although that description may be redundant because I believe all elves are racist, including Santa’s, Keebler’s, Jeff Sessions, and even Kevin Hart) invaded the Wall Street Journal’s newsroom and—instead of printing the evening edition—ran 54 pages in 10-point Times New Roman font just repeating the word “nigger” and, accompanying each “nigger” article was the byline, “by a nigger,” with one of those cutesy writer illustrations depicting a version of a Sambo doll complete with a huge blackface smile, I would still argue that the elf-produced, “Nigger Special Edition the Wall Street Journal” would still rank No. 2 on the most fucked up, racist things I have ever read list.

But don’t fret, the Wall Street Journal also holds the No. 1 spot.

On May 2, the Journal published “The Danger of Debating Reparations,” an op-ed that could only be described as the transcript of a pornographic dream of a sentient swastika making sweet, gentle love to a flaming cross in front of a Confederate statue on stage at the CPAC convention while a flabbergasted audience of genteel Christian conservatives fail miserably at pretending not to look.

As a personal policy, I tend to dismiss the thoughts of white people when it comes to solutions for racism because—anecdotally and historically—the group who legally slaughtered the Native Americans, enslaved Africans, imprisoned Japanese Americans, lynched, disenfranchised, stole land, oppressed and tortured every non-white population since the inception of this country have never, ever been on the right side of justice. However, when the article was published, I saved it solely because of the headline and the subhead, which said: “It would push the country to angrier extremes on either side, stimulating fresh antagonisms.”

The article was written by Lance Morrow, who is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center—an institute dedicated to “applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy.” I don’t know how much the EPPC pays him, but I assume Morrow also moonlights as a psychic who channels the subconscious thoughts of every Caucasian who has ever pronounced the word “negro” as “nigra,” because his thinkpiece is essentially a smorgasbord of smug, self-entitled Caucasity, rife with cocksure pretense.

Or, alternatively, it’s just white.

Despite no one asking him a damn thing about reparations, Morrow begins by explaining that the Democratic candidates who are freely discussing the issue of reparations should slow down because “the notion may be too volatile to indulge in a campaign year,” and it may “help re-elect Trump and make race relations worse.”

This is the unfounded “not-the right-time” argument that has been used to sideline every discussion of equal rights since the beginning of time. Before American was 20 years old, five states had abolished slavery. In 1787, the Northwest Ordinance passed, forbidding slavery in the Northwest Territory, before the U.S. Constitution was even ratified. Slaveholding was outlawed in every northern state by 1804 because this country, including many of the founding fathers, knew slavery was morally wrong. Yet, this country waited for another half-century to absolve itself of its original sin because “the notion was too volatile.” It’s the same argument used to delay acting on segregation, voting rights and women’s suffrage.

First, let’s be clear, Morrow isn’t just anti-reparations. He’s against talking about reparations. But Morrow doesn’t end his belittling essay dismantling the logic of addle-brained negroes there. He describes how Ta-Nehisi Coates “plumbs the ancient rages” in “The Case for Reparations,” explaining that Coates—I bullshit you not—“may be a little too eloquent for his own good.” Morrow goes on to list three arguments against reparations that are repeatedly recirculated in mayonnaise-smeared talking points:

Most white people and their ancestors didn’t own slaves, so why should they bear the burden? This idiotic argument never holds up to scrutiny. That’s not the way government works. I have never driven on Interstate 5 in California, so why do my tax dollars have to pay for that? These people also curiously ignore the fact that—even after slavery ended— for years, black citizens paid for schools, colleges, libraries and municipal centers that, because of Jim Crow, they could not use.

Black people owned slaves. Plus, white people freed the slaves. Again, these people don’t see race … until it benefits them. No one is asking white people to pay reparations. Reparations would be paid by America. Part of living in a country is the responsibility of paying its debts. You know who else would have to pay reparations? Black people.

But how would we determine compensation, who should receive it, and how it would be meted out? This is the most idiotic part of the argument. Morrow is saying that America shouldn’t even discuss reparations because we haven’t figured out exactly how it would work, which can only be solved by discussing reparations!

But these are just throwaway ideas to buttress Morrow’s real point: That we shouldn’t discuss reparations because not only would it make white people too uncomfortable, it might “reconstitute America’s old racial conflict along new 21st-century lines.” Instead of healing and repaying debts, Morrow feels that the discussion (not actual reparations, mind you; just the simple discussion of the issue itself) would “throw open a trapdoor out of which all manner of bigotries and bitterness, all the black bats of American history, would fly.”

“It would push the country to angrier extremes on either side, stimulating fresh antagonisms,” Morrow writes, adding that it would “reconstitute America’s old racial conflict along new 21st-century lines.”

That’s right. This Jesus-inspired sayer of things finally enunciated the truth that white people have avoided saying for years: That they don’t want to talk about racism because—according to the great and wise Lance Morrow—the one thing we can be sure of in any discussion about race is that it will make white people more racist.

Thank you for finally saying it.

But then, with what I imagine was a straight face and smoke emanating from his enlightened, superior typing fingers, Morrow—without an iota of irony or realizing his sheer stupidity—wrote the most condescending, unapologetically white collection of words in the entire linguistic history of cobbling subjects and predicates into sentences and, in one fell swoop, forever embodied the entirety of white supremacy:

Better to keep monsters, old and new, locked in the basement, and to let the conversation upstairs in the living room be as genteel as possible—even hypocritical. In matters of race hate, candor is overrated. Hypocrisy may be the moral way to go—until, as time passes, people become more civilized.

Godmotherfuckingdamn, that was racist.

I cannot fathom this level of arrogance. Apparently, Lance Morrow is wielding his superior intellect to protect the legion of simpleminded negro reparation advocates from the harsh realities of shit white people have already been doing for 400 years anyway. And the only way that Lance proposes we can come together is by avoiding the entire subject of what separates us in the first place.

Lance, in his patronizing, bigoted benevolence, explains that this gutter conversation about reparations is too undignified for public debate. And, when he says that “people” are not civilized enough to have it, we know about whom he’s referring.

And where is this idyllic utopia of a non-racist America that Morrow and his ilk are so worried about being destroyed? Apparently, there is this prejudice-free Shangri-la where they don’t steal our votes, underfund our schools or shoot our kids in the face. And this wonderland of Caucasian bliss can only be destroyed by one thing—the truth.

I want to go.

After being kept in chains, hunted like wild animals, raped, beaten, having our babies ripped from our arms to be sold down the river, hung, imprisoned, falsely accused, starved, shot and killed in every conceivable way and some our brains could not even imagine, Lance is reluctant to discuss reparations because he wants to protect us from the “candor” of prejudice and discrimination.

Don’t worry, Lance. I think we can handle it.

However, we do appreciate your concern. It’s not often that a great big brain like yours stoops down to protect us poor, deluded darkies from seeing the harsh underbelly of America’s “race hate.” We are so grateful for your advice. However …

You could have just typed “nigger” instead.