Stuff Black People Who Like White People Like

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Regarding yesterday's post,  a most concerned reader writes:


At long last, you reveal yourself as a racist. I am shocked, shocked to read such tripe. Not surprised, mind you, just shocked. 

What if Jim Fallows (as white a motherfucker as ever walked the earth) were to write something like you wrote today? " I always watch Spke Lee movies, and listen to 50 Cent, and have a real feel for how the colored folks think..." I do not fucking think so. 

If you thought more about being human, and less about being a disaffected black man, you might be worth a shit someday. Give it a try. You might just have it in you. If you don't. the world will never know....

A most vexing  question indeed. Hmm. Given that my foray into caucasia is new, I feel that I should not weigh in on Jim's whiteness quotient. This feels above my pay-grade. Taking offense, however, is not. So I assure you that should my colleague ever make such a statement as indicated above, I would immediately tell him that his words were highly offensive, callous and unbecoming of Atlantic standards.  What kind of person listens to Spike Lee to find out what black people think? Every good white person knows that there's only one man for that job. And his name is Billy Dee Williams.

Why do black people keep changing their names? Billy Dee has the answer. Can I make racial jokes about black people? Not before consulting with Billy Dee. Why do black people get to have all the pathology? Billy Dee will tell you. Do black people really like fried chicken? Enough to kill for it. How do I know?  I asked Billy Dee of course!

Billy Dee Williams. The one-stop shop for negrophiles in training the world over. Talk to this man and you'll be sipping that purple stuff, raising your contacts with the cops, and shortening your life-span, inside of a week. 

Billy Dee knows.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. More

Born in 1975, the product of two beautiful parents. Raised in West Baltimore -- not quite The Wire, but sometimes ill all the same. Studied at the Mecca for some years in the mid-'90s. Emerged with a purpose, if not a degree. Slowly migrated up the East Coast with a baby and my beloved, until I reached the shores of Harlem. Wrote some stuff along the way.

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