The Problem with Michael Harriot

My Seething Mind | November 29, 2019 | Moi

[A_perfect_lady]

For those of you who do not know Michael Harriot, or his forum for black anger, The Root, here is an excerpt from his rant on Monday against Peter Buttigieg (who, from what I can tell, is so hated by blacks we have no fear of him getting anywhere near the DNC nomination):

Michael grew up in “the hood.” To get to school every day, he cut through the projects to a short cut that was interrupted by a deep ditch. He would jump the ditch, however, it if had rained, he waited for someone to help him put a 10-foot long wooden plank across the ditch that separated the black part of town from "the bucolic neighborhood" where his high school was located.

"If no one was there, or if a prankster had hidden the makeshift bridge, then I had to either leap across or walk the long way around, adding an extra 15 minutes to my morning walk."

The rest of the article uses this childhood memory as a metaphor for how racist and unfair America is. You see, there was a way to school, and it was paved and clear, but it took 30 minutes. The shortcut took 15. Now, there are those of us who would say it like that: The way to school takes 30 minutes, but there is a shortcut that takes 15.

But to Michael Harriot, the way to school was the shortcut, and anything else was a detour. And he is mad, mad as hell, that the shortcut wasn't paved. That's what it boils down to, you see. He wants the shortcuts paved. And presumably, not just for him. We must pave a shortcut for everyone. That this would leave the entire world under concrete is apparently the price we must pay to satisfy Michael Harriot. Indeed, a world under concrete is an excellent metaphor for socialism, so I suppose he would actually like seeing the world turned into one big parking lot.

I am not a woke white woman, I'm just a white woman. I grew up on a subsistence farm 7 miles out of town, and had to stand at the end of my driveway at 6:30am every morning, often in sub-zero temperatures with a windchill factor of Pluto, to wait for the bus, because MY route to school was well over an hour. You can imagine how much sympathy I have for Michael. But the point is, this is how he sees life. He doesn't see that the way is paved, but it takes a while. He sees that the shortcut is NOT paved, and he's having a fit about it.

His neighborhood had no bus, so either his choices were to jump the ditch, take the extra 15 minutes, or skip school. He never skipped school, he says.

Now this is laudable: he refused to let the ditch (or those exhausting extra 15 minutes) stop him. However, if you breathe a word to him along the lines of, "see, that's our point," imagine his wrath.

And what if he had just skipped school? If he had, he says, "... my decision wouldn’t have been based on a tropological dearth of “motivation” or communal ambivalence.

No? What would it have been based on? He never says what his decision would have been based on. The closest he comes is:

"As I grow older, I realize that I was not gifted, talented or even diligent."

He's just lucky, he says. I'm cleaning up the language a bit here, but yes, it's luck. He worked hard and got ahead, but don't say that. Say it was luck, because otherwise he is a living testament to the uncomfortable fact that this whole rant sounds like First World Problems to a kid in the slums of India.

But as far as I can tell, this man doesn't even realize what he just said. The point of his column is that he is angry that Buttigieg points to a lack of black role models in the black community (or that's how he interprets Buttigieg's call for more ways to motivate black children.) Michael Harriot worked hard and he made it, let's make that clear first. He made that crippling, 15 minute walk to school every day (30 if it rained, alas, alas). But it's bizarre for him to write what he essentially is writing: I worked hard and made it, so don't you tell me that if we just work hard, we can make it.

But that is exactly what he unwittingly proves with this rant. He acknowledges that he's not gifted, talented, or diligent. In other words, a black man can make it in America today even if he is not gifted, talented, or diligent, simply by taking that extra 15 minutes to walk the path that was paved for him. (Dare we remind him who paved that path?) Yet, racism is still the deciding factor in every issue, because the shortcuts have not been paved.

The shortcuts have not been paved for millions of poor whites either, but no one cares less about poor whites than middle class black liberals, so I won't belabor my bus ride again. Michael Harriot wants those shortcuts paved and he wants us to do it.

Now, here's the hook of his interesting little anecdote. In the summer of 1992, he tells us, the local drug dealers gave him money to go to college.

"those same D-boys I walked past every day collected all of the ones (and a few five-dollar bills) from guys on the block and handed it to me..."

They gave him $7,322 for college. And that's not all! He didn’t have a driver’s license and his mother is legally blind, so they hired someone to drive him to college... in a chauffeured, 1965 drop-top white Cadillac, with hydraulics and gold specks.

Let's look at this: the drug dealers gave him over $7000 to go to college, and drove him there in a Cadillac.

Could they have built a little footbridge over that ditch with some wooden pallets for a tenth of that? Yes. Yes they could have. But they didn't. They were waiting (in a Cadillac) for us to come do it. Well, we didn't, and he's still mad. You see, the Michael Harriots of the country want the shortcuts all paved, and with our tax dollars. We cannot use the tax dollars of the drug dealers in his community, because drug dealers don't pay taxes. AND who is he mad at about this? Us, of course. Wypipo.

The problem with Michael Harriot is, he's a brat.

[A_perfect_lady]

If you want his entire rant, the link is: https://www.theroot.com/pete-buttigieg-is-a-lying-mf-1840038708

I was very careful to make sure my excerpts add up to less than 100 words.

[Amberdawn]

What a moron. He should be parachuted into ISIS/AQ held territory in Mali, where he can experience real racism when he’s sold to an Arab muslim.

[Ann Archy]

Butt Boy is a 37 year old HOMOSEXUAL who is mayor of a small FAILED CITY!! NEVER FORGET....STUPID people elected Barack HUSSEIN OBAMA while we were in the fight of our life against MUSLIM TERRORISTS!!! Geesh….how stupid can we get!