Tuesday night’s episode of All In with Chris Hayes featured the above awkward clip where a black woman accused a black man whom she thought was white of co-opting black culture. Hayes’ invited his guests — CBS Sunday Morning‘s Nancy Giles and writer/vlogger/DJ Jay Smooth — to have a discussion about Starbucks’s new Race Together initiative. The eight minute segment played out as a perfect example to Smooth’s YouTube lecture: How To Tell Someone They Sound Racist.
The awkward back and forth played out like this:
“I can’t not tease Jay about the kinda like brotha way he was trying to talk, like, ‘Hey,’ with the rap music in the background, and like down with the people,” said Giles, good-naturedly.
“I’m a rap guy!”
“Yeah, I know, but it’s another interesting, funny thing about race. Like, there would be some people that feel that you co-opted something like that, and other people might feel like that’s his background and that’s really cool, too,” said Giles, smiling as the road under her ceased existing and she started tumbling down a cliff. “These are conversations, you know, ‘Yo, like ya know, yeah, if somebody takes my wallet,’ I mean it’s really interesting.”
“It’s also interesting because I’m actually black, but you assumed otherwise.”
It’s worth noting how entertained Hayes was by the whole interchange. Without missing a beat, Jay Smooth capped off the conversation with this accurate statement:
“And this is the sort of awkwardness that we can look forward to at Starbucks across America.”
Mic drop.
(H/T: All In with Chris Hayes / Morning After)
