8 Times delicious white tears shed over racist BS quenched our thirst
Wakandan Water = White Tears
White tears are the tastiest seasoning ever. Better than Lawry’s on the most tender cuts of lamb chops. Better than adobo on arroz con gandules. Better than lemon pepper wings…wet.
White tears are the tastiest seasoning ever. Better than Lawry’s on the most tender cuts of lamb chops. Better than adobo on arroz con gandules. Better than lemon pepper wings…wet.
Of course, they’ll never come close to making up for centuries of oppression at the hands of white folks, nor will they mitigate the actual pain and bullshit that Black people endure every day. But damn, they taste good.
The latest in Morton-branded tears came courtesy of Forbes writer Scott Mendelson, who wrote a piece with the headline, “Box Office: ‘Black Panther’ Should Terrify Every Hollywood Studio.” It should come as no surprise that Black Twitter took his ass to task for suggesting that the film’s success was somehow a bad thing for the industry.
I’m trying to recall when the press said movies like Star Wars, Avatar and Harry Potter were considered Hollywood’s worst nightmare for being so popular. But a Black film brings in $1 billion and it’s a nightmare.
— Jenee Darden (@CocoaFly) March 20, 2018
Diversity issues in Hollywood are white men like @ScottMendelson who doesn’t realize how they reinforce stereotypes in industry critiques.
Language like “hurts,” “kills,” “terrify,” “worst nightmare” — show how they even criminalize us doing positive things. #BlackPanther https://t.co/sH9ElUkNqj
— Ernest Owens (@MrErnestOwens) March 21, 2018
For what it’s worth, I don’t think Mendelson, who explained himself, had ignoble intentions, nor am I sure if he even came up with the headline, but it was obvious to me when I read it that it was going to rankle some people, and Forbes probably would’ve benefited from having someone on staff who could’ve sent them in another direction.
Don’t fret, though: there are plenty of stories and headlines out there that evoke some true Caucasoidal eyeball sweat. Here is a list of a few recent white tears in a wide variety of flavors. Drink up!
1. South African Tears
When Australian Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton suggested that white South African farmers should be allowed in to his country to avoid “persecution” from a majority Black government, it’s impossible not to recall that Black South Africans were still in forced segregation in the not so distant past. I can fill a whole-ass phone book with all the people I’ll feel sorry for over these supposedly persecuted farmers.
2. Oscar Tears
Jordan Peele’s mega-blockbuster Get Out is part of a recent Black filmmaking renaissance (including Moonlight and Black Panther) and Peele’s historic win for Best Original Screenplay got everyone with melanin hype about an Academy Awards show that was otherwise televised Ambien. Of course, not everyone was excited. One anonymous Academy voter accused Get Out of “playing the race card.” It should come as no surprise that some members of the Academy – conventionally older and whiter than a statue in the Vatican Museum – had a problem with a movie that shines a light on good ol’ American racism? Guess that light is a bit too bright for a lot of these fools.
3. Confederate Tears
In the same issue of National Geographic in which the editor in-chief apologizes for the magazine’s racist history, there’s a story about white people who are anxious about being “left behind.” The lead picture, with a redhead girl rocking a sourpuss as the rebel flag hangs on the house behind her, tells you everything you need to know about where this story goes.
4. Nazi Tears
The ultimate in white tears courtesy of the nation’s newspaper of record, The New York Times, caught oodles and tons of shit for their sympathetic, normalizing profile of Tony Hovater, an Ohio-based white nationalist who just wants to be understood. Not sure why they thought it was a good idea to run this story as a response to the national tension brought about by the tiki-torch whites and their f—ery in Charlottesville, Va. like it would go over well. On one hand, I appreciate the effort as someone who started his career telling human interest stories, but fam…nobody was on staff to tell the editors that they would spend hours attempting to clean up that shitshow?
5. Actual Tears
Sure, joking about metaphorical white tears is fun, but it’s way more enjoyable when the tears come flowing for real. Oregon man Fredrick Nolan Sorrell was arrested for being a bigoted bastard toward Muslims and broke down in supposedly apologetic tears in the courtroom during his arraignment. Life comes at your ignorant ass fast, Freddie Boy.
6. Colonizer Tears
Conservative thought “leader” Ben Shapiro, who has the most punchable face this side of Dylann Roof, dedicated actual minutes on his ash-laden show to bitch about people being excited for the release of Black Panther. Dude asked if Blade was not enough for us, because apparently more than one darkie comic book film within 20 years of each other is a tad too much for the culture. One can be forgiven for going to sleep at night imagining Shapiro’s fist-balling resentment at Panther’s record box office numbers.
7. Tech Tears
When you ask Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant, if Black lives matter, she says “Black Lives and the Black Lives Matter movement absolutely matter. It’s important to have conversations about equality and social justice.” Cue up those white tears. It’s hilariously ironic that people are legit pissed that the world’s biggest corporate killmonger with a CEO who has more money than God, created a device that acknowledges the importance of Black Lives Matter in its own endearing fashion. You control what you ask Alexa, so if hearing a coffee can-shaped electronic device show us love is so hard for you, just shut up about it around Alexa. And maybe reevaluate your life in the process since you have one of those brittle spirits Dave Chappelle talked about.
8. Orange Tears
No list about white tears is complete without President Preparation H complaining about something. People who are literally paid to protect the safety of this country’s citizens told this fool not to call Russia president Vladimir Putin to congratulate him on his recent election victory. But because his parents probably never whipped that ass as a child, he did it anyway. Since his White House is full of more holes than your average Will Smith movie, the news leaked to Washington Post, and now those dead chinchillas he calls brows are furrowed with anger. I’d probably enjoy this all a bit more if I knew he didn’t have the power to get me and my entire block nuked in our sleep.
Dustin J. Seibert is a native Detroiter living in Chicago. Miraculously, people have paid him to be aggressively light-skinned via a computer keyboard for nearly two decades. He loves his own mama slightly more than he loves music and exercises every day only so his French fry intake doesn’t catch up to him. Find him at his own site, wafflecolored.com.
