An article written by Michael Harriet for The Root, caught my eye the other day. The reason it caught my eye, I must admit, was because of the image that was chosen to accompany the article. The headline of the article read: “Free Thought Is For White People”, and included a photo of the Kardashians.
The only problem with the photo, is that instead of including the Armenian-American family with their boyfriends and various baby daddies, The Root publication, chose instead, to use a more lily-white version of the family with Kim Kardashian’s famous husband, Kanye West pictured near the bottom, almost as if he were photo-shopped in to the picture as an afterthought. Whoever had the brilliant idea of using a photo of the Kardashian family as an example of “white privilege” or “racism”, should be fired. Never, has there been a family that has received more wall-to-wall media coverage than the Kardashians. And never, has there been a celebrity family that has been more racially diverse.
The photo that was used with the article is almost as absurd as the article itself. While it’s not entirely clear what point Michael Harriet was trying to get across to the reader, one thing is clear, he is a man who has a deep-seated hatred for white people and anyone who dares to think outside of the Democrat playbook for minorities.
Harriet begins his article by explaining that he is a black man and then proceeds to claim, “I am free”. He moves immediately to his young daughter, who sounds like, in spite of her father, has managed, for the most part, to break free of the chains of victimhood that appear to be keeping him down. Harriet opens his article by sharing how his daughter has chosen activities and sports that are not consistent with her skin color. He feels it is his obligation to remind her, that no matter how unencumbered she may feel as a young, black, American female, she needs to understand her limitations, (the limitations that are based solely on the color of her skin.)
Michael Harriet writes:
I am free.
I am a black man.
Perhaps the biggest challenge a father raising a black child in America will ever face is conveying the difference between those two things. It is hard to explain the oxymoron of making sure a person believes that the world provides them with limitless opportunity while ensuring that they understand the limiting reality of being black in America.
It is a precipitously thin wire that black people must walk every day. The path between life and liberty is a dank, cramped, unending alleyway in which we are forced to spend our entire existence. The borders are unmarked, but stepping outside the boundaries can often mean death.
My daughter is free.
She is an unpredictable ball of creativity and intelligence who believes that she can do anything she has ever seen anyone else do. It is my job to facilitate that. When she saw a fencing competition in the 2008 Summer Olympics, I was forced to sit in fencing classes for four hours every week until she became a world-ranked saber fencer at 11 years old.
That was before she watched a few skating videos, gave up fencing and started dragging me to skate parks every weekend so she could become a skater. The skating thing was before she decided to teach herself to play the guitar from watching YouTube videos, which was before she became obsessed with woodworking and making her own guitars from scratch.
Anytime she sees a person doing something interesting, she figures she can, too, which means I have spent time taking her to do a lot of “white things,” including Pokémon competitions, comic book stores, graffiti lessons, chess tournaments, Ultimate Frisbee games, hiking, rock climbing and lacrosse leagues.
One day she was going to some cosplay nerd convention thing (that may have been the official title; in fact, I’m pretty sure it was Cosplay NerdThingCon), and I asked her if she had her ID. She insisted that she didn’t need it because she wasn’t driving. “Yes, you do,” I responded. “Just in case someone asks you for your ID.”
“People can’t get in trouble for not having identification if they aren’t driving,” she said, explaining how she had seen someone (probably some white person) on YouTube explain how it is unconstitutional to force anyone to give their identification. “I know my rights. You don’t need ID.”
“You’re right,” I said, probably not calmly. “People don’t need ID. You do.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because you’re black.”
Harriet quickly moves to Kanye West as an example of a black man who doesn’t know his place.
After explaining Kanye West’s decision to pledge his “allegiance to President Donald Trump”, Harriet then discussed the audacity of West to express his belief that everyone should enjoy “the concept of ‘free thought.’”
According to Harriet, another name for conservatives who support our current President is “clansmen” (Ironically, Harriet is referring, of course, to a hate group started by Democrats in 1865 to terrorize Blacks in America and keep them down)
Kanye and conservatives have embraced the term “free thought” as a way to explain that black people aren’t required to all think alike. That blackness is not bound by the Democratic Party, progressivism and perpetual victimhood. Kanye and his conservative clansmen contend that unless black people dispossess themselves of this insipid Negro hive mind, we will never be free.
Am I the only one who reads this paragraph, and wonders how Michael Harriet will ever allow himself to be free, especially free of labels, or his hatred for anyone who doesn’t look or think like him? Harriet continues with his rant/article, calling conservatives, “blowhards” who use their “lipless mouths” to advocate for gun rights (Because surely, black Americans living in crime-ridden, inner-city neighborhoods, would gladly turn in the legally owned guns that they use to protect themselves and their families from criminals in their neighborhoods, who are likely using illegal guns…am I right?) The FBI’s 2016 crime reporting data shows that 90.1 percent of black victims of homicide were killed by other blacks.
Conservative blowhards are quick to tell black people that slavery was something a few white men did centuries ago. Then, with the same lipless mouths, they advocate for gun rights, Confederate monuments and Christian ideals based on some shit that a few white men did centuries ago.
“Free thought” means “white thought.”
Harriet goes on to explain how easy Donald Trump’s children have it because they’re white. Nevermind the powdery substance that was mailed along with a death threat to Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Vannessa Trump, who was home with her small children. How dare the mailman deliver such a package to a white person related to Donald Trump? How dare someone sends such a threatening package? Didn’t they know that Donald Trump Jr.’s wife was “white”?
Next, Michael Harriet makes one of the most outrageous accusations yet, as he claims that he refers to Kim and Khloe Kardashian, (who both have children with black men, whose younger sister, Kylie, has a baby with a black man, and whose mother, Kris, who has a black boyfriend), as the “KKK”.
Donald Trump and the people at Turning Points USA don’t have to think about their children being seen as older and less innocent simply because of the color of their skin. White men aren’t thought of as larger and more threatening, as black men are. White adults think that black girls are less innocent than girls like Kim, Khloé and the other white Kardashians. (I forget the rest of their names. I usually just abbreviate it “KKK.”)
No article about “white privilege” would be complete without mentioning a black man who was “wrongfully” killed by a white man, or even better, a law enforcement officer.
Ask Trayvon Martin’s mother if thinking would have made a bullet bounce off her son’s chest. Ask Police Officer Jeronimo Yanez how he freed Philando Castile’s brain matter from his skull. Ask the black men who get 20 percent more time in jail for committing the same crimes as white men how free they feel.
Funny, how Harriet makes no mention of the thousands of innocent blacks that are killed every year by other blacks, who are either gang members or drug dealers. But why would he mention those facts, when they don’t fit the “victim” narrative Harriet wants to pass along to his young daughter.
The most racist part in all of this discussion is conservatives’ assumption that most black people are feebleminded lemmings whose dunderheaded thoughts must be the result of low IQ and brainwashing because, according to their logic, conservative white people know best. Apparently, they believe that all the idling Negro minds put together don’t equate to one brain cell of a free thinker like Donald Trump.
The fucked-up part is that Kanye believes this, too. The rest of us are too dumb to free ourselves, or too lazy to work ourselves out of our black misery. But he thinks “freely” now.
Like the smart people.
Like the successful people.
Like the white people.
To truly think freely is to truly understand both sides. I try not to pound a defeated version of blackness into my daughter, and I’m pretty sure she knows she is black. I want her to be able to think for herself, form her own opinions and believe that her possibilities are limitless.
Sorry to be the one to break the news, Michael Harriet, but by the sounds of it, you’re a little late.
For Michael Harriet’s entire article, go to The Root
