You Charlamagne & Tomi Lahren Aren’t Going to Disappear…Get Used to It

Onyx Contributor:  H.T. The Coyote (@Awkblerd)

Social media has been blowing up with anger, rhetoric and of course think pieces about the fact that Trevor Noah and Charlamagne Tha God hung out with conservative darling Tomi Lahren.  People have gone as far as to say that these two are Uncle Toms, that they aren’t black, that they sold out black America for the potential to be around a (mediocre?) white woman.

And that’s what this is about, opinions.  Yes, you could factually say that Tomi says offensive and in many ways incorrect things about black people.  Yes, you could say that Charlamagne says misogynistic and sexist things about women, particularly black women.  But the thing is, even if these things are true, while you have the right to be offended and state your offense as you see fit, what you cannot do is expect everyone to share your opinion regardless of how you may think of them.  I won’t sit here and say Tomi Lahren is right, but I also won’t sit here and say that every black celebrity has to be completely apprehensive of every white conservative person they encounter because to not do that is “normalizing racists”.

The modern age of “wokeness” that demands perfection even of past celebrities and activists is so pervasive that now anyone who dares show common courtesy to conservative people might as well have joined them in their eyes.  And ultimately this level of polarization can only shrink the number of like-minded people in time to where people really do think the political discourse is supposed to work like on social media where if both parties don’t agree, one side can block the other and maintain their opinion unchallenged by them.  But that’s just not life.  It has never been life.  And for the sake of mature adult conversation, it cannot be that way.  I have many friends who I may not share many political views with, but we’re still friends.  I know plenty of people like me.  Bill Maher hangs out with Ann Coulter.  Jon Stewart hangs out with Bill O’Reilly.  Hell, James Carville married republican strategists Mary Matalin.  And yet this is the generation of so-called liberals who outright refuse to sit down and have a cordial conversation with people from the other side.

Truth is, yeah, maybe, just maybe the fact that so may people are attempting to be cordial with Trump and his supporters should be more of a sign of maturity than surrender.  Trump won the election.  I don’t like it, you might not like it, but this is just what life is now.  But this rhetoric that this is only going to lead to concentration camps and the like?  Look, if even a sizable percentage of that becomes true, you have every right to find me on social media, or in real life, and tell me how wrong I am.

But for the love of your respective deity, please stop acting like this is a bigger issue than it actually is.  No amount of think pieces or sassy tweets will make the average person look at this like black men hate black women by hanging out with her.  Honestly, keeping it 100:  would any of you had been this angry had Trevor Noah had drinks with, say Stacey Dash, or if Charlamagne had dinner with Sage Steele?

Think about it.