Tucker Carlson spent no time discussing the news bombshells yesterday: a fifth woman came forward to accuse Roy Moore of sexual misconduct, this time accusing him of sexual assault; and revelations of a secret correspondence between Donald Trump Jr. and Wikileaks. Yet Carlson devoted the first third of his program to racially attacking a black professor.
As Mediaite noted, the only time Carlson talked about Russia was to highlight the news that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is considering appointing a special counsel to investigate the Fox/Breitbart-generated Uranium One/Clinton Foundation faux scandal. Carlson's lips were sealed about Moore altogether.
But here is what Carlson made the top story: a black professor who wrote a New York Times op-ed asking, “Can My Children Be Friends With White People?” Now, I have my own issues with the piece, mainly that the author, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law Professor Ekow N. Yankah is suggesting that most white people are falling in line with Donald Trump’s bigotry without providing any statistics to show that that’s the case. I’d also argue that his real point is the sorrow and anxiety he feels watching the country take racial steps backward in the age of Trump.
Regardless, a black man worrying about white people in 2017 should be a cause for concern, not hostility. It’s not as though Yankah was suggesting his son should walk around with guns and see every white person as a potential lyncher. But Carlson was clearly unconcerned with Yankah's apprehension.
Instead, Carlson fixated on trying to prove to his viewers that Yankah represents the latest outbreak of black racism that Carlson seems to think is the biggest, if not only, racial problem in the U.S.
Carlson tipped his hat in his opening “question” that purported to side with the Civil Rights movement and concluded with, “I don’t understand when it became O.K. to generalize about racial groups.” Later, Carlson even threw in Fox’s favorite racial whataboutism, black crime.
Unfortunately, Yankah, who, I suspect, is probably not familiar with Carlson’s racial concern trolling, politely argued the substance of his theses rather than addressing Carlson’s pattern of using African Americans to send dog whistles to his white supremacist fans - all the while pretending to be concerned about racial equality. Carlson even had the nerve to say Yankah engaged in “the definition of racism.”
Despite all that, Yankah did a terrific job of debating while also remaining affable and looking nothing like Fox’s “Blacks Behaving Badly” stereotype for African Americans concerned with racism.
Nevertheless, Carlson made sure to get extra time to attack Yankah without the inconvenience of Yankah defending himself. After Yankah’s segment ended, Carlson devoted a second segment to the subject but now with a like-minded African American, Jeremy Hunt, to answer the “question,” does Yankah think America is evil?
Laughably, Carlson claimed he's trying to ease racial tensions, not inflame them:
CARLSON: I feel like there’s a lot of – to be blunt – racial tension in America and I want to make sure that everyone with a public voice is doing his or her best to make it better and part of that means treating people as individuals rather than as caricatures.
Sure you do, Tucker. Maybe your white supremacist fans will buy that horse manure. But no decent person should.
Watch what Carlson thinks was the most important news of the day yesterday below, from the November 13, 2017 Tucker Carlson Tonight.