Photo : Jessica McGowan ( Getty Images )

After reading this article, you should be furious.

You are supposed to furrow your brow and denounce racism. You should loudly state that there is no place in America for such detestable actions. To show how you are fighting the insidious threat of hate in your country, you should post your grievance on your Facebook wall or retweet it to your Twitter timeline.


Then, having done your duty to eliminate something that doesn’t matter anyway, feel free to go about your day.

A number of Georgia residents have received racist robocalls aimed at the state’s Democratic candidate for governor, Stacey Abrams. The calls feature a voice impersonating “magical negress ” Oprah Winfrey pretending to advocate for Abrams in the upcoming gubernatorial elections.


And I’m not just trying to earn more of the mythical cash and prizes that I always win for playing the race card. NBC calls the robocalls “racist,” and CNN revealed that the calls came from a hate group that sponsors a “white supremacist and anti-Semitic video podcast hosted by Scott Rhodes of Idaho,” writing:

The same neo-Nazi group had targeted Gillum with racist robocalls after he won the Democratic Florida gubernatorial nomination in the late-August primary and again in October. It also sponsored robocalls in Iowa, using Mollie Tibbetts’ death to attack Latinos and promote white supremacy, according to the Des Moines Register. Tibbetts, a 20-year-old college student, was abducted in July while jogging in rural Iowa, killed and dumped in a cornfield. The man arrested in her death is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico and has pleaded not guilty to a charge of first-degree murder.

“Years ago, the Jews who own the American media saw something in me.” the call begins, in a voice that no sane person would think was Oprah Winfrey, adding: “The ability to trick dumb white women into thinking I was like them and to do, read and think what I told them to. I see that same potential in Stacey Abrams.”

“Where others see a poor man’s Aunt Jemima, I see someone white women can be tricked into voting for,” the call in which you are supposed to be outraged by continues. “Especially the fat ones.”


Are you upset yet? Are you incensed by this maddening trickery that would never sway anyone who intended to vote for or against Abrams, anyway? Are you ready to be an ally?


While I believe that studies showing how students of color are statistically more likely to receive an inferior education based on nothing but the color of their skin is the biggest act of institutional white supremacy in the history of America, it’s much easier to be mad at a racially-charged prank phone call created by idiot racists than it is to point to factual data from the U.S. Department of Education.

This prank call is white supremacy. And the unassailable statistics showing disproportionate police killings, incarceration rates, drug arrests, unequal sentencing and Stacey Abrams’ opponent’s campaign to suppress the black vote are apparently just matters of opinion. No one gets mad at pie charts. Bar graphs don’t summon anger as much as silly phone calls.


It is easier to refer to Scott Rhodes as a “white nationalist” and a “troll” than it is to truthfully say the same thing about the leader of the free world. No reputable media outlet would call Brian Kemp a white supremacist, even though his government-sanctioned “exact match” policy unquestionably make Georgia’s white voters superior to black ones (According to an Associated Press analysis of 53,000 voter registrations put on hold by Kemp’s office, nearly 70 percent of the registrants are black).

But don’t be upset by the data. This dumb phone thing should anger you.

Not the real white supremacy. Not the white nationalist president. Not the policies that reinforce discrimination and inequality. Not the true racism that affects black voters. Not the uneducated children, the state-sponsored violence, not the pervasive criminal injustice. Not the white apathy. Not the false equivalency. Not the fact that being black in America is a never-ending realization that the boot on your neck is part of a national, agreed-upon effort to elevate and uphold whiteness as this country’s superior caste.


No, idiot. It’s the phone calls.

But instead of fighting against racism, voting, pointing out the inequities of the entire foundation on which this country is built, you can easily fight white supremacy by condemning one idiot from Idaho who gets his jollies from trolling random people with prank stupidity.


Or, if this is the thing that truly threatened America, maybe we could all end racism today by hanging up the phone.

See how simple that was?

You’re welcome.