Close-to-the-Bone Satire of the "Conversation About Race"

[Cyrano Johnson]

I found it pretty funny. Some people won't. But this video of MSNBC inverting America's perennial "national conversation" about the appalling state of Black America is worth watching either way.

Cord Jefferson's bitingly satirical recent article takes center stage. It's filled with flipped versions of familiar bromides of the "racial conversation": "I'd like to ask the caregivers of the children in these videos what they've been doing," "Whites in America have been out from under their European ancestors' boot heels for centuries . . . [so] being "oppressed" is no longer an excuse for behavior like this," and "White-on-white violence is a menace to white communities across the country, and yet you never hear white leaders like Pastor Joel Osteen, Bill O'Reilly, or Hillary Clinton take a firm stance against the scourge." Chris Hayes co-stars in the role of a Caucasian Don Lemon. (Cord is grimly funny in the video, too, churning out a few more classics like "one of my best friends is White.")

[Shjade]

My prom date in high school was a white woman. She was very white, actually. She used to ride horses and do that whole thing.

Beautiful.

To be honest, even knowing it was a satirical approach going into it, I couldn't help taking it seriously at first, which is pretty sad.