Masterclass: Black Women Conduct Dignified Takedown

A Warning for White Males Only

[Warning: satire used liberally in this discussion despite gravity of the situation being discussed]

I was given a tip on a chat that I don’t think was meant for me, a white man. Nevertheless, I secretly followed in and went over the information the participants were putting out and could instantly see why I wasn’t invited to this Masterclass. Largely because it shows a white male co-host of his own show being abjectly humiliated by the other host and the guest, both black Americans. Taken together, these two black women humiliated him! They shut down the co-host and his attempted rebuttals by rapidly dismantling the premise of his reaction while employing positive dignity. This was indeed a “masterclass.”

White men better start watching this and analyzing their techniques to try to reconstruct “the book” these women used. Because if whoever trained them spreads the secrets of this takedown, pretty soon Biden will be signing a reparation bill endorsed by Ted Cruz once from the mind-f#$K these women will be giving.

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I’m convinced this whole segment was arranged in advance. That’s why I’m writing about it. I’m trying to deconstruct this segment to learn from it and be prepared. White men in the media typically take to their airwaves with the same old racist tropes with a sprinkling of new ones. They don’t seem like, as more and more black women outstrip white men in college graduation rates, they will be able to perform well in the future against this onslaught of black female dignity.

These two black women, both obviously well-versed on the topic and having studied the Lemon clip, seem to well composed and may have arranged their joint responses the night before in a huddle session. I’m not saying that I have sympathy for this white guy co-host, who clearly looks like he was brought on as a prop or a tool. Only that this segment has the appearance of being ‘pre-planned’ by the guest and the black female host — how else could this “masterclass” have been given? Natural talent and born intelligence amplified by education? Well, that could be the case, clearly it probably is. But no preparation? I’m not so sure.

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This brings us to the set up on this Masterclass on how to dismantle false racist facts. Let’s see how this whole clip could have been set up. First, set up a clip beforehand about a controversial internet discussion on white supremacy. Next, invite another like-minded person. Note that she invites a black woman who appears peerless in dismantling white arguments. Ms. Joy Gray may not have known her or practiced with her guest, but it’s clear she got a seasoned expert and did her research in finding Ms. Denise Long.

The handsome female black American host, Briahna Joy Gray, came with real panache and a beautifully joyous and researched approach that was a masterful framing that allowed to give a gentle smack down to her arrogant white male host. She appears on some weekend show on The Hill, where this segment occurred. [Full disclosure: I don’t know her but only learned from a quick google search that she is a lawyer, was a spokesperson for Bernie Sanders during his campaign, and has been accused of being a fake leftist. (I didn’t check into that last accusation as of course she got to be accused of being a fake; she’s a black woman so her creditability will be constantly attacked.)]

Her guest was some clearly brilliantly trained scholar conducting masterclass on taking down media whites and their arguments, Ms. Pamela Denise Long. Apparently, she has gained insight into white media by studying it from the inside as a commentator on Newsweek. Notice how both black women have what looks to be two last names, creating an impression of some European or British type ancestry that will give their arguments credence to a white audience. Could be just a coincidence, but consider how you present your name, that’s just a mini-lesson note.

Remember, Preparation and Research, finding a “tag team” partner who is professionally researched. Don’t go it alone and unprepared in a battle against white supremacists. They are about to dismantle the stinging rebuke of the person who appears to be the Royal Buckingham Palace’s spokesperson. This Palace woman totally tore apart Don Lemon, a gay black man, so expertly that he had no comeback. I’m not surprised though. The British monarchy has been practicing gaslighting for 500 years and know how to not only dissect your anti-racist arguments but to turn them around on you so end up — if not praising them with the blind reverence of the British subjects — then at least leaving them temporarily speechless.

Don Lemon was clearly not prepared to handle reversal of the argument. He couldn’t agree with her, since was asking for reparations to a black man, but had no response. What could he say? He probably didn’t even know what hit him until at least 20 minutes later off-air when his cheek was still burning from her slap. I don’t blame him. I won’t get into the CNN newsclip within the clip, other than obviously saying that Ms. Joy Gray picked the right one.

This female Hilary royal spokeswoman was superior by far than any Fox commentator, who only appear repulsive and hate spewing in their nightly supremacy rant (I’m not saying they spew supremacy, only identifying their wellspring of anger from which all their comments flow from).

Set Up Tip for Masterclass internet or podcast debate: Pick the right clip. This Hilary woman left Don Lemon speechless. Ms. Joy Gray picked the right clip to play and respond to. To beat the best, put them next to you in your rehearsed takedown. It feels like this Hilary woman also targeted the “right” interviewer and did her own prep before appearing before him. She relied on his blackness and gayness and Americanness as a shield or experiences from which to draw a response. She anticipated those three qualities.

Look, don’t be surprised, other monarchs, fascists and dictators have nothing on the British monarchy, a corporate entitled firm that ran the biggest salve trade operation in human history, followed by the brutal occupation of Africa, India, and parts of China, including extracting a hundred-year lease on Hong Kong after their invasion. These monarch gets respect and tourists flock for a glimpse of Buckingham Palace based on that reverence, even after brutally occupying and killing colored people globally.

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Set Up Tip for Masterclass: Study your clip you will dismantle. You ae taking down a pro, not a bumbling fool. This Hilary woman said it was Britain that abolished slavery first to an American black man. She is schooling a black man on American TV about slavery: the audacity. That face may not have been technically true, only abolishing slave trading. The British went on to slaughtering black Africans, dividing up their countries and drawing their own artificial boarders around these divided nations to separate the people while giving the other halves of those countries to French, German and Italians to “control” so those nations wouldn’t re-unite in the now famous 1884 Carve Up African Conference in Berlin.

After the conference, the other dimwitted leaders did know what to do with their newfound colonies, while the British proceed did, being practiced slave traders and losing their original colony of raw material extract in American. The Brits then extract all the raw materials under the Crown for the next 8 decades while using almost free black African labor (or slave labor without the word slave, like Jim Crow Slavery without the word slave and sharecropping), shipping the raw material (stealing it?) back to Mother Britain. None of these obvious facts the Hilary royal apologist woman mentions — and neither does Mr. Lemon! So unprepared he was.

To top it off, the British called those divided nations “Colonies,” as though they were doing some polite British gentrifying that they should be thanked for, instead of being seen as a vicious conqueror of a warring occupation (which is what it was). Then the British invaders followed it with the audacity of having the Queen visit, as though descending from Heaven to put her blessing on these “poor Africans” (poor in both meanings, that they were impoverished by being forced into slavery and poor as in looked upon as “poor lowly uneducated subhumans by the superior British”). And then the British demanded respect after the occupation — and got it. Hilary represents the Whitest White Supremacist.

Don, that was your big chance, and you blew it. Now you can see why Ms. Joy Gray decided on this clip. She wanted to face the best white supremacist spokesperson, not just some rambling redneck waving a confederate flag.

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So what, I digressed, but you have to know what you’re up against. You have to study it and get some relevant background material ready if you want to do a takedown clip or podcast. I’m tired of seeing “And what do you think?” reaction stuff. These women were mega-focused and cooly collected. Ms. Joy Gray and her hand-picked guest, Ms. Denise Long, surely made some cue cards. This wasn’t their silly (yet maliciously violent) mom’s white supremacy they were dismantling. This was literally the King and Queen white supremacists.

Lastly, it helps to have a prop, a straw man. In this case the ultimate right choice, a young, inexperienced white man. He may be a liberal; I don’t know this “co-host.” But don’t worry. He was unprepared, which you ideally want. He was totally caught off guard like Don Lemon was, and was rendered with his weak replies, which they anticipated.

I’ll just handle what Ms. Joy Gray did, the part of the Masterclass where she destroys her “co-host” strawman without him knowing it. Ms. Denise Long’s comments were critical to the set up of taking down the co-host. She was severe yet dignified in dissecting and laying to waste the Hilary woman’s argument. I don’t think I have room to go into depth on her comments, so please review for homework.

However, when this white man did respond, realizing that co-hosts just should sit there but try to contribute, they had created the environment for the smack down. That is the point to prepping in advance and in choosing a straw (white) man. Sorry, for pre-interpreting this white man’s rebuttal if you haven’t seen the clip, but it’s reflexive, since I’m a white male and I am interpreting his rebuttals during the segment as arrogant and snarky. I was thus thinking of calling this piece “Masterclass: How to Handle a Snarky White Man” but that perhaps should be written by Ms. Joy Gray.

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Now that they set up with the clip, the research, and the guest has given her reaction — the supposed “raison d’etre” for them being there, the real plan is fully in play: Ms. Joy Gray takes the white straw man down, eliciting the type of reaction from him as framed by their arguments to the clip. The white co-host responded the first time by interrupting her (planned, researched) mention of the Haitian Revolution as the real first abolition of slavery.

Of course, that wakes him up, as it goes against the narrative that whites ended slavery (but not the narrative that they started it, conveniently left out), so he interjects something predictably diminishing of a black accomplishment by saying something like, That was a bloody incident. Ms. Joy responded with a smile and an absolute masterclass statement, Yes, that’s correct. [Masterclass tip, quickly agree with the condescending white man to discard him, as he won’t be expecting immediate agreement, and then quickly move on showing why you do agree with him. Do it quickly with a smile though as he will want to reflexively interrupt like he already did.]

She swiftly “adds” to his remark, They [the black slaves] killed all the whites on the island, who had formerly enslaved them, and of course we (Americans in our history books, turning the absent of CRT in the white books against him) often celebrate the results of bloody wars (like World War One and Two). [Masterclass tip number two: be prepared with not only a counterexample, “adding” it to his remarks to look cooperative, but why it’s a good counterexample — in this case how abolition was first done in Haiti by slaves not as the white Hilary spokeswoman said, showing they studied the clip to scour it for facts and counterexamples: it was not an autocratic monarch involved in the slave trade who first disbanded slavery.

This hard fact absolutely means the white male co-host next to her has no retort really. What could he say, Slaves shouldn’t have rebelled against their brutal captors and enslavers that beat them? I don’t think so. Also, notice the use of the word “bloody.” Although I’m not using her direct quotes, this word was slipped in. It served as a reminder that wars are bloody, that white men love watching bloody war movies with soldiers, and that white men soldiers were gutted, bled out and lost the war to a bunch of raggedly untrained slaves. Well, that just helped lay to waste any rejoinder this unrehearsed white co-host could have to that whole Haiti thing right?]

Then she throws in this gem: And the American Revolution, when we too overthrew our colony overlords — and why should we have to suffer? [Masterclass point three: she aligns the Haitian revolution against repressive colonialist overlord who was also an arrogant monarch, the King of France, with the American revolutionaries, who were white men, though the first man to die and be martyred as a hero of the revolution was a black man, according to John Adams. Now of course he is in a trap he didn’t anticipate when he woke up that morning, grabbed his Starbucks and flirted with the barista before heading into the studio while dreaming of his rapid promotion to anchor of the evening news. At this point though, he is forced to make a comeback.]

Lastly, the weak-kneed white straw man (or co-host) responds claiming the typical white American response: Do we really have to pay reparations, it was so long ago? [I forget the exact quote, but you know this tired lame response, I’m sure, which I’m even sick of hearing as a white man.]

She doesn’t get up on her seat and scream, “Yes, you really have to pay reparations for that century of whipping and exploiting blacks for free labor and raping them?”

I would have clapped though had that happened, but it turns out she’s too classy. And at this point, I realize I’ve been played. I actually was set up by this framing Masterclass to realize the obvious answer is Yes. I said it myself: Yes, you have to pay. It’s called taking responsibility. You put “1776” on your car which was long ago to take all the credit but then take none of the responsibility for what came afterward, you child. “1776” white men didn’t build this nation, black slaves did, you sick moron. It’s called owning up to the past.

[Masterclass last point: Leave the answer obvious to the last point. The viewer or audience's mind will fill in the answer, making them your co-conspirator. Ms. Joy Gray, who is a joy to watch, takes down the most difficult argument via this royal spokeswoman to address question: why honor enslaved black Americans who built this country?

Ms. Denise Long does answer, and she says so much more that I would urge to see. And because she was cleverly chosen as the expert, she throws in the final slap in the face: Yes, the French should pay back the reparations to the Haitians that they were forced to pay for not being slaves. And with interest! (Ouch, she shouldn’t have added that final backhand, my face is still stinging.)

Masterclass complete. Now go out and destroy some white rhetoric.