Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot: #ADOS and Tariq Nasheed at the Turn of the Decade
“This is after all the same person who, when the native-born black community needed a clear and informed voice to properly
articulate to Tucker Carlson and his audience of millions how the logic of American white supremacy is in fact nakedly on display in the project of importing foreign-born blacks into this country, could only respond by arching his eyebrow in a studied manner and asking the host: “So we don’t live in a system of white supremacy? Everybody’s lying, Tucker?”
That’s not missing your shot. That’s taking the ball, bouncing it off your face, and then placing it in the opponent’s basket for them, twice.
Because at that point you’ve not only freely given Tucker Carlson—one of the most execrable commentators to’ve ever been plopped down onto the American media landscape—the opportunity to easily tease out your lack of knowledge, but you’ve further allowed him to humiliate your group by getting away with asking a question calculated to disparage the very fact of their ongoing and unique oppression. How could white supremacy possibly be said to be alive and well in such a diverse America, asks an incredulous Carlson. To which Nasheed’s most astute rejoinder on national televisionis essentially “What? It’s not?”
How could Nasheed possibly allow Carlson the satisfaction of sorelishing that moment—where the host just so clearly knows he has an intellectual plaything before him on the studio teleprompter—that he lets out a scoff which in it seems to in fact contain the entire arrogant, murderous and genocidal history of the very white supremacy that Nasheed just let him pretend no longer exists.
To do that is to completely excuse oneself from making any further contribution to the discourse. It is the type of thing that gives lie to the whole ‘FBA doesn’t do politics,’ which is said as if he imagines himself to even have any real choice in the matter. What the Tucker Carlson fiasco demonstrated is that he has no choice but to not do politics because he simply can’t move nimbly enough in that space to accomplish what needs to be accomplished. He might be able to tap into the emotion coursing through this thing and really slickly market the idea of what needs to be accomplished, but the revolution will not be merchandised. And if your response is “But, but #ADOS has t-shirts!” Yeah, and the people buying them and wearing them are doing so while attending local chapter meetings across the country, encouraging others to call their representatives about the most salient issues for their group, showing up at the Supreme Court, and just in general being extremely and obsessively politically active.“
So he basically said Tariq dropped the ball during the debate with Tucker. How does that make him a white supremacist?