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A Screenshot of a Boat Shoe

Spoiled milk-filled boat shoe repurposed as a moat for mice with sentience Tucker Carlson is a person who exists in the world and is paid money to say things on TV. He is, also, a racist. Which is less an accusation or an insult and more just an articulation of a relatively mundane observation. Heโ€™s…

Spoiled milk-filled boat shoe repurposed as a moat for mice with sentience Tucker Carlson is a person who exists in the world and is paid money to say things on TV. He is, also, a racist. Which is less an accusation or an insult and more just an articulation of a relatively mundane observation. Heโ€™s racist the same way his blazer is navy blue and his face is artificially tanned and eminently punchable.

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Why Black-Owned Businesses Face Bigger Risks in a Global Trade War
Why Black-Owned Businesses Face Bigger Risks in a Global Trade War

And despite the aggressively faux irony of this screenshot from his show last night, heโ€™s as sure of his racism as a dog is of its anus. His entire steez is a performance of it; his wardrobe, his hair, his diction, his word choice, his occupation a meticulous curation of the sort of self-aware whiteness that swaddles itself in it. It is, for Tucker Carlson and the men and women like him, a signal-emitting motif. Racism looks like himโ€”exactly like himโ€”because he wants it to.

Because, of course, it isnโ€™t fine to just be racist. Whatโ€™s the point of even being it if itโ€™s stashed away and forgotten about, like a loose Altoid in a glove box? Whereโ€™s the fun in that? Instead, racists perform racist vaudeville, complete with finishing schools and apprenticeships and rehearsals and season pass subscriptions. They have curricula and best practices; rubrics and metrics; team building retreats and professional development sessions. The claim that theyโ€™re not the real racists is the running gag, the milky tie binding each thread of whiteness.

Basically, racism looks like a boat shoe.

Straight From The Root

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