Welp…Fox News has me hating everything and it’s not even noon yet y’all. I guess that on Tuesday’s edition of The O’Reilly Factor, filthy old Billy boy and other annoying white minions spewed some classically white garbage. In response to the Black Lives Matter movement, there’s been a growing conversation about whiteness and white privilege…it’s not like it took us several hundred years to get to that point and countless lives to get there. How many people of color have had to die for us to even be talking about this? I don’t know, but Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich says of “white privilege” that “It is easy to laugh at.” Um. Like seriously. I’m just not even playing here because it’s beyond obscene and it just makes me want to hide. Fox News, go fuck yourself.
“To me, especially in the Northeast, confronting my white privilege means going to the tanning salon,” Pavlich stated, her face glowing like misplaced citrus in front of a green screen image of the US Capitol.
(Okay, so it’s not as orange as some of the white girls I went to high school with in the Midwest, but I just really don’t like this person so…)
O’Reilly’s white tears collected as he whined about the University of Vermont’s three day retreat dedicated to helping students unpack their privilege. A map of ‘murica flashed in front of stars and stripes, printed with the words, “CAMPUS MADNESS.”
I think its fucking laughable that a workshop or a retreat about anti-oppression is called “Madness,” by Fox News. Lol I mean I guess students doing blackface isn’t madness, hazing and rape on campus isn’t madness, curriculums that erase entire histories aren’t madness. No. Talking about white privilege is “madness.”
“You didn’t give me a trigger warning before you asked me about my whiteness!” squealed Fox Business host Kennedy Montgomery. “You’re pointing at me!” she yelled at O’Reilly.
“You’re pointing at me,” sounds like a pretty reasonable response to someone checking you on your shit. Right? I mean if you stepped on my toe or, shit, I don’t know, kidnapped and enslaved my ancestors then…well hell yeah I’m pointing at you dude! Pavlich also said that “White students are being ostracized,” on campuses, complained about people losing jobs over racist acts, and pretty much called the whole discussion around white privilege “anti-American.”
I think that language like this and the way they are talking about white privilege is just straight up violent. Like okay so I get it man, it sucks to get called out for being an asshole and perpetuating racism and yeah dude, it’s not so easy to authentically confront your privilege and answer to those it oppresses. And I’m up for the work of supporting other white people in that. But pretending it doesn’t exist or arguing in favor of ‘reverse racism,’ is far beyond whack.
“Do you have white privilege?” O’Reilly asked Montgomery. “I don’t know that I do,” she said. “I have never cashed in on my white privilege,” Um. Tbh girl, you cash in on your white privilege pretty much every day you leave your apartment without having to maneuver the ambient systemic violence of which our world is comprised.
“But maybe, you unconsciously do [cash in on your privilege],” said O’Reilly, doing a pretty good impression of a human being, considering he’s a dementor and all.
“Unconsciously doesn’t count….in the words of Sigmund Freud,” she said.
I don’t have words and I guess as a white person, it’s probably a privilege for me to feel “stunned,” because this general attitude is something people of color deal 24/7. I think what’s more unnerving for me is the way that this news is marketed as a real thing and that we are supposed to somehow take these people seriously.
I don’t know. Maybe the whole conversation around white privilege is not something that an all white staff should be broadcasting. White people shouldn’t be in charge of telling us what white privilege is and isn’t, because our privilege renders us seeped in society’s mass delusions. I guess I’m just sort of ready for white people to shut the hell up, myself included.
If you’re trying to get really mad and hate everything, you can watch the video below.
More from BUST
Oklahoma Wesleyan President Calls Student Activists, ‘Self-Absorbed and Narcissistic’
This Donald Trump Portrait Was Painted With Blood
Spot The Sexism In This Fox News Clip Mash-Up!
