It’s not just Portland. While the Black Lives Matter mob has been invading residential neighborhoods to demand that white people, under threat of violence, literally leave their homes, CNN did much the same thing on Sunday night, devoting an hour-long special to berating white Americans and demanding reparations.
W. Kamau Bell’s special, United Shades of America, completely ditched the notion of “united shades” and discussed the idea of white people providing reparations for America’s history of racial injustice.
According to Bell, “all the free labor” African Americans gave white people prior to their emancipation deserves serious financial recompense.
For the episode, the race pimp took his CNN crew to the U.S. party destination of New Orleans, Louisiana because apparently white power is evident in its history. He began the episode this way: “You can clearly see how the effects of enslavement and all that followed continues to put the black community of New Orleans in a near impossible position to succeed.”
Bell elaborated, “there’s no city in the country that combines the best of America’s blackness, the pain of America’s racism, and the pain of watching white folks exercising all their rights.” That last part he stated as images of white people partying on Bourbon Street flashed on the screen, to which he added an exasperated groan. So here we have open contempt for white people having a good time in New Orleans on a major cable platform.
So there was nothing really new in the special -- just the same poisonous resentment and racial grievance. Bell’s appeal to authority on the issue included the “1619 Project” and Black Lives Matter rhetoric based on, to put it politely, bull. And of course, that fancy new idea about Covid affecting the city’s African American population disproportionately, which is more evidence of racism and the need for reparation.
Bell interviewed Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the “1619 Project” and the woman who has claimed that the “white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world.” Even though the project’s premise misinterprets U.S. history, putting slavery as one of the central reason the country exists, Bell called it “an unvarnished look into the legacy of American slavery.” It just kept getting more ridiculous.
Part of Bell’s anti-racist shtick included showcasing the city’s recent slave rebellion historical re-enactment. Bell was filmed walking next to re-enactors in his kitschy “1619 Project” T-shirt, you know, trying to conflate a memorial of the city’s history with some modern anti-racism movement. Though there was one poignant moment he must have accidentally captured while filming, asking a couple about what participating in the event meant to them. The woman in slave garb stated, “It’s emotional, but I feel like, ‘What do I have to cry about?’” You mean this woman isn’t still reeling from the effects of the antebellum southern slavery and isn’t crying about her need for reparations? Weird.
But of course, Mr. Bell was keen to keep up the petty digs against “white people.” In one pathetic sequence, a white man walks in between Bell and the camera during the re-enactment and the exasperated host throws his hands up saying, “Even at the rebellion re-enactment, white people walk through the shot.”
Well, would $20 in restorative justice work for you, Mr. Bell?
