MSNBC Host to ‘White Folks’ on the Will Smith Slap: You Need to Sit This One Out

Image by Peter Thomas from Pixabay

Tiffany Cross, host of the MSNBC Saturday morning show “The Cross Connection,” finally got the chance to weigh in on the Will Smith slap. She feels strongly that this should remain a “family discussion” because “white folks” don’t understand the “nuance to what happened” and should really sit this one out.

In case you’re unfamiliar with this toxic “personality,” you’ll immediately grasp why she is sometimes called “Joy Reid lite.”

Cross’ guests included “fellow black folks” Michael Harriot, a writer at TheGrio, and actress Yvette Nicole Brown, who both agreed that because a black man slapped another black man who had insulted a black woman, this incident was all about race.

“I want to be really clear, while we talk about family talk. I think it is utterly ridiculous to center this conversation in the opinions of white folks,” Cross began. “This is just about what happened there. The jumping off point should not be what might the white people think about it. It is just this moment between those two men. I thought it was uncalled for.”

“I will try to put this in context for our white fellow countrymen as best I can,” Cross said. “In really, truly, black America, there’s a commonality amongst us all. And if we went to a white person’s home, and it was their family dinner, and we were sitting at the table, and the mother hauled off and slapped the father.”

“And everybody at the table has an opinion,” she continued. “You know, the sister is like, ‘Mom, you always do this.’ And the brother is like, ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this.’ And Dad is like, ‘You’re terrible.’”

“If I weigh in as the guest in this home and I say, ‘Yeah, you guys are terrible.’ Everybody’s like, ‘I’m sorry. When did you get an opinion?

“This is our family table.”

She added, “That’s what this moment felt like for many of us. And there’s a nuance to what happened that we should get into.”



Harriot noted that blacks, unlike whites, are used to seeing violence. “It was about how black people relate to each other,” he said. “It’s hard to explain to a white person what the difference between an open-handed slap and a punch is, because they consider it all violent. It’s hard to explain that everyone, really, has a certain threshold for which they will react in a certain way — whether it is say something to their mother, their sister.”

And when you choose to insult someone, Harriot explained, you’re taking a risk because you don’t know what that person’s threshold is. Chris Rock took that risk.

Did Harriot not understand that Chris Rock, a comedian, was paid a small fortune to poke fun at the star-studded audience, as countless other presenters have done throughout Academy award ceremony history?

Or that Rock had no idea of Jada Pinkett Smith’s health condition? Noticing that both Jada and her daughter Willow both had shaved heads, perhaps he thought they were making a statement. At any rate, Rock was simply doing what he’d been paid to do.

Brown said, “We’re [the black community] trying to move forward as a family,” as if this were a tragedy that had occurred in a private setting among a black only crowd. Why does she think it’s being called “the slap heard around the world?”

A family? Is every black person in America a member of Brown’s family? I don’t consider every white person in America to be a member of my family.

It’s as if this panel were trying to bring America back to the days of segregation.

Sorry to intrude upon your family moment guys, but considering that the slap occurred on the national stage, “white folks” have every right to weigh in. Contrary to your insistence upon putting a racial spin on this incident, it had more to do with the strange relationship between Will Smith and his wife than anything else.

Like a child enjoying a prank until their eyes suddenly lock with a disapproving parent, Smith was laughing at Rock’s joke until his eyes met the gaze of his angry wife and immediately, a flip was switched. Rather than reacting as an angry black man whose wife had just been disrespected, Smith snapped into action like a henpecked husband. There was nothing racial about it.

Finally, if three white panelists discussing an event that involved only white people on Fox News said ‘blacks should sit this one out,’ the cries of “racism” would be deafening.

The anti-white racism of all three panel members was on full display. This double-standard is growing very old.

Cross began the segment by saying that most of her viewers are white. Are the white liberals who watch her show too stupid to understand that Cross just insulted all of them?

 

A previous version of this article was published on The Western Journal.
Follow AFNN:
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA
Please follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter 

Leave a Comment