CNN Guest Attempts to Whitesplain the Black Experience, Fails Miserably
“But some of my best friends are [fill in the blank oppressed minority group]” has never, ever worked as an excuse during any kind of discussion on social issues such as race, class, sexuality, and the like and you’d think that someone appearing on national television would know that. Dr. Wendy Walsh is CNN’s “Human Behavior Analyst” and you’d really think that she would know that, but during a heated discussion on live TV she pulled out the “multiracial family” card to back up her “in-depth knowledge” about the black experience. To make it worse, Walsh, who could not be any blonder or whiter, said this to CNN’s Don Lemon and fellow guest Alicia Walters, both of whom are black.
Yeah, this is one hot mess of a segment.
Watching the video, Walters is simply incredulous at what Walsh says. One highlight has Walsh positing similarities between Rachel Dolezal and Caitlyn Jenner, saying that maybe Dolezal chose to live her life as a black woman without ever being a black child but no one is telling Jenner that since she didn’t have a (heteronormative) girl’s childhood and adolescence (with embarrassing period stories!) that she couldn’t identify as a woman. She insists that “transracialism is a thing.” And then she tries to use the satirical excuse that Stephen Colbert — the fake version played by the upcoming host of The Late Show — always used: “I don’t see race.”
“Can we just agree there’s one race and it’s the human race?”
And then she tried the “Don’t tell me I don’t know your experience because you can’t tell me that you know my experience, and my experience is way weirder!”:
“I find it really interesting that you’re making assumptions about me and the kind of life that I live. Because I happen to have a multiracial family, and I find it really interesting that you’re making assumptions about me and the kind of life I live.”
Remember Kristen Wiig‘s character Penelope on Saturday Night Live? The one who had to out-do everyone in a conversation? “Well, not only do I have a biracial family, but my dog is probably triracial and one-sixteenth Cherokee Indian princess. She had to change her name to something more English because she was almost made a slave. Actually she was a slave, but she escaped and triumphed over oppression. Actually my dog was Harriet Tubman.”
Lemon knows that Walters can just go ahead and take care of this herself, so she drops this on Walsh:
Walters: “There’s indeed the human race. And the way that United States has built the power structures of this country, race matters. We’re seeing it every single day at the same time that we’re having a conversation about whether or not fundamentally black lives matter there is volatile and visceral experience of being black in this country that I have personally experienced.
“There is value to that and we must name it. It’s not a hair style; it’s not an affinity for music or a history. It’s a lived experience.”
Walsh: “You know, I talked to my biracial children about what race they are and they don’t really care. I have every single color under the rainbow, and we had this discussion on the bus, and nobody cares about race. It’s the last thing happening in our party bus right now.”
Walters: “This said as black men are dying in the street. Wow.”
It’s easily one of the dumbest conversations about this story that you’ll watch and it just gets dumber by the minute. See for yourself:
I think my favorite part is when Walsh tells actual black woman Walters that she (Walsh) “completely understand[s her] perspective” and then almost immediately takes it back, then tries to cover by saying she grew up in a lot of diverse places. As a white woman.
Dr. Wendy, from one white woman to another, sit this one out. You’ve done enough for the cause.
[h/t Raw Story]
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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
