By Colby Malsbury
Tribal Theocrat has been the beneficiary of white privilege for far too long now. After all, we couldn’t produce these articles without laptops and electricity, and that’s grotesquely unfair to those Wakandans living in the nether regions of Chad. To atone, we have agreed to be coerced into interviewing the charming Declan Whiteout (preferred pronouns to be released to us as soon as our funds are deposited in his account), recent graduate of Bayard Rustin Seminary and a self-described conservative, on the inerrancy, irrefutability, and just plain goodness of Critical Race Theory. Hey, it was either this or the rack.
TT: Okay, let’s get this over with. How are you?
Declan: You’re assuming.
TT: Huh?
Declan: You’re assuming that my state of existence is worthy of your attention. Why is that important to you??? Because I’m burdened with SKIN THAT IS MELANIN-FREE??? To my everlasting SHAME?????? This preponderance of racist confraternity is why we can’t have nice things, like open borders and Ubangi chant choirs at the local coffee roaster. You, bigot, are an Assumist.
TT: Even if it is 5 pm, it’s way too early for this.
Declan: I haven’t slept since last week. No time. I’m on a mission for abolition!
TT: I hope that pays well. Why don’t you first explain to our readers what Critical Race Theory is?
Declan: CRT is Restoration Militant. It is the making of all things whole – like, if you took a bunch of individual parts from your old Playstation and threw them down a hole, where they could settle into a mass at the bottom and be at peace. Which you should totally do anyway, as the new Switch Pro will have a hundred times the gig capacity. But anyway, the basis of CRT is empathy. How can whites go about healing the innumerable wrongs they have wrought against the non-white martyrs of the earth without first understanding the turmoil and anguish they have borne upon their scarred and sweaty backs? Thus, the only way to bring about reconciliation is to subject whites to a lifelong EST seminar. My dad was a member of one of those in the 70s. It blessed him with the analytical fortitude he needed to become the PCA elder he is today.
TT: Now wait just a dad-blamed minute. Weren’t you folks the ones who spent the Obama years assuring everybody that race was just a social construct? And yet here you are making race the core presupposition of your movement. You speak of reconciliation. How do you reconcile this blatant contradiction?
Declan: Why are you questioning my authority?
TT: I’m not….
Declan: You GenXers think you’re all that with your latchkey childhoods and your Magnum P.I. memes!!!! If you can’t handle a little new perspective, that’s your cross to bear, not mine!!!
TT: It’s not new. Marcus Garvey was preaching your platitudes in the 1930s. And John Brown was living your platitudes eighty years before that.
Declan: And I bet you would have been entering Marcus Garvey in bare-knuckle boxing matches to fatten the coffers of your plantation, right? The love of blood money is the root of all evil!
TT: Listen, kid….
These two words set off fifteen minutes of autistic screeching on Declan’s part.
TT: I’ll be sure to bill you for the pen of mine you swallowed in your inchoate rage. But to continue. How is it possible to claim Christianity and yet hold to the tenets of material vengeance, like you do? Is ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’ canonical now?
Declan: Checkmate, Grand Wizard! You assume CRTical thinkers are proponents of Enlightenment thought? Do you even Bible? What are you going to assume next? My gender?
TT: You’re against rationalism? Well, I’ll be.
Declan: Enlightenment thought is automatically rendered null and void because it was propagated by old white landowners made plump on their privilege. They shouldn’t be allowed to think, just like they shouldn’t be allowed to rap. Death, disease, and dispossession is the inevitable result!
TT: Spoken like a true Toussaint L’Overture.
Declan: I don’t subscribe to his podcast. But he sounds sick!
TT: Oh, he assuredly was. So if you reject all endeavors from white men as institutionally tainted, from whence do you derive your litany of injustice against blacks? After all, it has been white men who have maintained the historical chronicles.
Declan: Uhhh, projection of patronage much? Do you think it takes an alphabet to express tears of rage and frustration?? CRT holds that oral history, coming as it does from the heart rather than from the wallet, is the most legitimate expression of grievance.
TT: Oral history? You mean storytelling?
Declan: You make it sound so unclean.
TT: No, but oral history by its very nature relies on sensationalism and exaggeration for its effect. Do you mean to tell me you never embellish tales of your own street marches when you’re relating them to your comrades around a campfire, while flying high on mushrooms?
Declan: They are not ’embellishments’! They are reality as I perceive it to be!! Just because you’re content with the fascist beam in your eye doesn’t make it Scriptural! Don’t you know God speaks directly to each individual? It’s obvious you never read Kierkegaard, like I did in my one graduate seminar!
TT: Well, you WROTE your thesis, didn’t you?
Declan: NO, fiend! I was allowed to deliver it at a freestyle poetry slam! Sheesh, do you live in, like, 1994 or something???
TT: Okay, allow me to play devil’s advocate. Let’s presume you’ve attained your goal, and convinced every single white that they are a malignant tumor upon the world. The vast majority of them are well into the process of plummeting from that precipice anyway. What’s the end game here? Do you have a specific telos in mind, or is CRT all about jabbing the caged tiger with a pokey stick in perpetuity?
Declan: There can be no true social justice without exquisite agony beforehand. That sweet, delicate, succulent, euphoric, chop-licking, spine-prickling, sweaty-smelling agony….droooooolllllll….sorry, where was I? Oh, yes. Well, punitive reparation payments to the victims of hierarchical terrorism should serve well. For a start.
TT: Don’t you think that hind teat’s a bit dry? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but whites in general aren’t exactly magnates these days. And isn’t extorting endless amounts of lucre from a captive populace rather….I don’t know….Jewish?
Declan: You don’t understand anything, and that includes economics! Where are blacks supposed to get the capital outlays they require to construct the AI infrastructure and cryptocurrency block chains they totally would have begun in the 12th century had not Whitey swooped in and laid claim to the mineral wealth of Africa? In, like, a week? Maybe if you hadn’t devastated their very own Wall Street in Tulsa in the 20s, this wouldn’t have been a problem! But you did, and now the piper must be paid!
TT: John Piper?
Declan: I sent him a text once, asking if he could be my grandfather. I’m still waiting for him to get back to me.
TT: The utterly lawless character of CRT doesn’t cause you to break one little stride as you mince gaily down the street, am I right?
Declan: No, why should it? What is the ‘law’ but a codified means of oppression, anyway? Laws sent runaway slaves back to their prisons! Laws prevented African-Americans from drinking the Perrier that flowed from white drinking fountains in Birmingham! Laws keep George Floyd off of Mt. Rushmore! So a pox on your laws!
TT: Does that include civil rights laws?
Declan: Tools of oppression! Mere scraps thrown to the mass of black humanity – or, as I like to call them, the Broletariat – to keep them from rising up and striking off their chains!!! Did you know Earl Warren was a Republican??? It’s true!!!
TT: So when, say, an ethnic feminist lecturer at Yale publicly brags about how she fantasizes about shooting white people, that’s perfectly jake?
Declan: Did I ever say I was anti-gun? I’ll have you know I’m a registered Libertarian! Why didn’t you know that?? It’s listed on my LinkedIn profile!!!
TT: I must say, you have done a less than stellar job of making a strong case for CRT throughout this whole ordeal.
Declan: FINE!!!! If you want to discriminate against me because I’m a late Millennial cusping on GenZ, go AHEAD!!! I don’t CARE!!! And don’t just take my word for it!!! I want to introduce you to a friend of mine who has endured REAL, ACTUAL, LITERAL systemic racism in his life – including INCARCERATION – and is willing to tell his story to the world!!! Chew on THAT!!!! (turning his head) Come on in, dude!
Bill Cosby enters the room.
Bill: Fazza in the wuzza wazza down by the shamazza shizza showzza!
TT: Oh, no.
Declan: Thank you for your courage in sharing your experiences, Bill. If at any time you want to stop for some therapy, I have a stuffed cow you can hug.
Bill: Is the Fat Albert still in syndication? I need income. I have some big-ass legal bills.
Declan: Fortitude, my friend, fortitude! Just a little longer through Canaan and then across Jordan to freedom. I can’t stop crying. Please go on with your tale.
Bill: Try to be a nice guy and offer a white girl a pudding pop, and see what that gets you! The-OOOOO, why you be wearin my sweater??? Is it still 1987? I bought three Porsches that year.
TT: Yeah, this isn’t my scene at all. I’m outta here. Maybe I can still catch 2-for-1 pitchers down at the pub.
Declan: You know what, Bill??? We should take our show on the road!
Bill: Chil’, you speak true!
Declan/Bill: ♫ E-bon-eeeeee and I-vor-eeeeee……♫