By Zack Linly
Welp, that’s it. I’m throwing away my 2023 Bingo card.
I was ready to throw it away when Anita Baker started beefing with Babyface and damn near tossed it in the trash then burned the trashcan when Ice Cube was riding around South Central L.A. with Tucker Carlson. But now it’s really time to rip that thang on up because yet another thing has happened this year that I did not see coming:
Larry Elder was actually right about something.
The conservative radio host who is running for president in 2024 (did y’all know that? I didn’t know that. Whatever, y’all didn’t know that either…) recently made an appearance on The Breakfast Club. Per usual, Elder was there to rip on Democrats, deny the existence of systemic racism, harp on absentee Black fathers and be loud and wrong about just about all of it.
Just about.
The one thing the presidential candidate and tragic Get Out victim was 100% correct about? President Joe Biden was wrong and racist when he told Black people “you ain’t Black” if they support Trump and Charlamagne Tha God was wrong for just sitting there and letting it slide.
Charlamagne asked Elder if he ever had a “n*gga wake-up call,” which he defined as “an incident in which a person of color forgets that they are of color and gets a reminder rather brutally with an unexpected act of racism.”
“Oh Brother,” Elder responded. (Note: He said “brother,” not “brotha.” I’m pretty sure he’s never used the latter. Elder is a Hulk Hogan “brother” with the hard R type, not a soul “brotha.” Just because Elder is right about Biden doesn’t mean he’s not still the type of “brother” who tucks in his polo shirt and pulls his pants up to his chest. Just sayin’.)
“Well, I’m acutely aware, Charlamagne, that I’m a Black person. (Sorry, but a lot of us were not acutely aware of that.) “Just as you are a Black person, and when Joe Biden insulted you by saying, ‘You ain’t really Black if you don’t know if you want to vote for me or vote for Donald Trump’ seems to me that should have been a wake-up call on your part. How dare this man come here and tell you, a Black man, you’ve got to think a certain way? I’m surprised you weren’t mad about that.”
Charlamagne responded by saying he just really wasn’t bothered by it because he doesn’t let such things bother him, to which Elder responded by piling on about Biden’s dishonesty about his civil rights record—which he was also correct about.
Watch below.
No, obviously, we’re not going to sit here and pretend this isn’t the same Larry Elder who told his sunken place roomie Candace Owens that white people deserve reparations for slavery more than Black people do because their ancestors had their “property” taken away. And despite the fact that he’s running against Donald Trump, last month, he said he was open to being Trump’s running mate in the 2024 election. So, nobody’s going to give Elder his props for checking Charlamagne about not checking Biden when he’s OK with being a Black lackey to America’s favorite orangey-white supremacist who could easily win a Verzus battle of racist remarks against the current commander-in-chief.
In fact, Republicans have been trying to capitalize on Biden’s “You ain’t Black” comment since he made it with the hopes to sway Black voters after spraying us with Bigot Amnesia spray so we’ll forget that they are the party of Black history hate and Confederate flag love.
But it’s clear why Elder was insulted by Biden’s remark, and it’s not because it was racist. Elder doesn’t care about racism—not the way he’s railed against Black Lives Matter and claimed that police are more inclined to shoot white Americans than Black Americans, which is statistically false.
The only reason Elder would be insulted by what Biden said (or is at least pretending to be) is that Biden insinuated that Black people must think a certain way and Black conservatives fancy themselves as “free-thinkers” who go against the grain, despite the fact that their so-called free thought always falls perfectly in line with what white conservatives think about literally everything.
Actually, now that I think about it, I’m going to keep my Bingo card—because even when Larry Elder is right, he’s right for the wrong reason.
