Michael Ian Black on Charleston: Maybe We Need to ‘Start Profiling White Dudes’
A regular on Comedy Central, perhaps best known as McKinley in Wet Hot American Summer, comedian Michael Ian Black has been tweeting all morning about the shooting at a traditionally all-black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Specifically, Black has focused on one of the many “hot button” issues that so many other celebrities and media personalities have already either (a) acknowledged, (b) discounted or (c) outright ignored — race.
Charleston: white dude Aurora, CO: white dude Boston: white dudes Newtown : white dude Time to start racially profiling white dudes.
— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) June 18, 2015
As you can imagine, Black’s initial tweet drew numerous responses from across Twitter’s broad spectrum of well-educated, thoughtful and absolutely patient users. But one of the more outrage-inducing aspects of this tweet was Black’s reference to Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as “white dudes.” Turns out, quite a few people disagreed with him, and he noticed.
There’s people on here telling me the Boston bombers, two White Russian dudes, were t white. What were they then? pic.twitter.com/Aw5wuZRMoX — Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) June 18, 2015
Over the course of the morning, no one was really able to adequately answer Black’s question, but they tried their best. Damn, did they try.
@michaelianblack Their families were from Caucasus. They were literally Caucasian.
— Julie DiCaro (@JulieDiCaro) June 18, 2015
But are Caucasians really white? Do they drink Mountain Dew? https://t.co/5T64PU6g89 — Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) June 18, 2015
Now I’m being told Russia is in the Middle East, which means the Boston bombers were Middle Eastern and, therefore, not white.
— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) June 18, 2015
@michaelianblack You can see Russia from Alaska, so I’m cool with Eskimos being Middle Eastern too. #Mali — Anthony Y (@hunkura) June 18, 2015
The Boston bombers were Muslim not white. Don’t be ignorant man. Every race has faults https://t.co/krkpyUn9Ac
— Skip Baeless (@Get0ffTheD) June 18, 2015
The Boston bombers look a lot like Nick Jonas. Are you going to tell me the fucking Jonas Brothers aren’t white? pic.twitter.com/jnSsorDYPZ — Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) June 18, 2015
Eventually, one of his followers said what pretty much nobody else was willing to admit:
@michaelianblack they were white, but their names were hard to pronounce. — HeatherWellsPeterson (@hootzpeterson) June 18, 2015
FINALLY a cogent explanation. https://t.co/NuodvRd9nK — Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) June 18, 2015
[h/t Boston Magazine]
[Image via screengrab]
