Whitlock: Will Smith is a tool to cancel men

In the court of public opinion, Will Smith will benefit from the indifference of black elites when it comes to black-on-black violence.

Barack Obama will not issue a statement suggesting that “Chris Rock could be his brother.” The Rev. Al Sharpton won’t call for a boycott of the Academy if Smith isn’t harshly punished. Lawyer Benjamin Crump will not threaten a lawsuit. Black Lives Matter and the NAACP will not take positions on Smith’s assault on Chris Rock.

No one will analogize Smith’s slap as a painful reminder of the public abuse black slaves were subjected to by their white masters.

Instead, black elites, aka liberal Negro wranglers, will seek to rationalize, justify, celebrate, and weaponize Smith’s emotional and criminal behavior at Sunday’s Academy Awards.

Late Monday night, Twitter influencer Jemele Hill floated the first trial balloon in manipulating the narrative related to Smith’s unjustified assault. Writing for the Atlantic, Hill argued that the reaction to Smith’s crime was a tale of “two Americas,” one white and one black. She said she couldn’t “help but notice the disproportionate outrage that many people in white America – and many in the Hollywood elite – are showing” toward Smith. She pointed to an angry, since-deleted tweet by director Judd Apatow that criticized Smith’s “out of control rage and violence” and comedian Howard Stern comparing Smith to Trump.

Hill’s job is to calm white liberals by assuring them that black people do not see Smith’s outburst as problematic. To the contrary, Hill insinuated that black people were inspired by Smith’s actions. She quoted actress Tiffany Haddish: “When I saw a black man stand up for his wife, that meant so much to me.”

The underlying message of Hill’s column in the Atlantic is that black people do not have a set of values and principles that determine our point of view. Everything is based on race.

We know that had a white male slapped Chris Rock in defense of his wife’s honor, Haddish, Obama, Sharpton, Crump, BLM, the NAACP, and Hill would all be disproportionately outraged. There would be calls for the white actor to be stripped of his award, permanently banned from the Oscars, and jailed for several weeks or months.

None of that will happen to Smith because black elites will and have convinced the establishment that the bad behavior of black people should not be taken seriously. Black Lives Do Not Matter. White perpetrators matter.

Chris Rock is Mychal Moultry Jr., a 4-year-old black boy shot in the head in Chicago. Rock is Serenity Broughton, a 7-year-old black girl killed by a bullet to the chest in Chicago. Black elites have not and never will beg you to say Mychal Moultry’s or Serenity Broughton’s names. They’re unimportant. They were not killed by white people.

Chris Rock, despite his fame and wealth, is unimportant, too. He was slapped by the wrong-colored perpetrator. Rock knows it. That’s why he won’t be pressing charges against Smith. He won’t be asking the Academy to strip Smith of his best actor award.

Black men settling their petty differences with violence is acceptable behavior in America. It’s acceptable because the black voices granted the largest microphones tell the world to ignore our violent mistreatment of each other.

Thirty minutes after Smith assaulted Rock, the white and black liberal elites assembled inside Dolby Theater showered Smith with applause as he blamed Richard Williams, the father of tennis legends Venus and Serena Williams, and God for inspiring his attack on Rock. Smith cried. He proclaimed that love will make you do crazy things. He said he was a crazy father just like Richard Williams. He said he was overwhelmed by what God had called him to do.

His acceptance speech was absolutely deranged. He sounded like Jim Jones addressing his followers in Guyana. The audience of elites drank Smith’s Kool-Aid.

No one should be rationalizing Smith’s behavior. We should be pleading for Smith to get mental and emotional help. Stripping Smith of his Oscar might shake him from some of the delusion created by living the past 35 years as a pampered and entitled celebrity. Punishment serves the perpetrator as much as the victim.

Smith’s 160-word apology was weak. He assaulted Rock on an international television broadcast. He wrote an apology on Instagram. He continued to pretend that Rock’s harmless G.I. Jane joke was a bridge too far. Six days before the Oscars, Jada Pinkett Smith released a TikTok video claiming she loved her shaved head and that she did not care what people thought of her hairstyle.

Will Smith needs to explain why he initially laughed at Rock’s joke. Beyond an apology, he should state how he plans to atone for embarrassing Rock, the Williams family, the Academy, and overshadowing the other nominees and winners.

Smith needs to be held accountable. His actions damaged public discourse. Comedians play an important role in free societies. They protect and expand free speech. Comedians and ministers are authorized to speak uncomfortable truths. We expect them to say things publicly that others won’t have the courage to do.

Dave Chappelle creates the room for the public to ponder whether we’ve gone too far in protecting the sensitivities of the LGBTQIA+ community. Joe Rogan’s podcast lets us debate the appropriateness of mask and vaccine mandates.

Jemele Hill and Tiffany Haddish support Smith slapping Rock because they want to live in a world where no one questions the motives, behavior, and logic of black women.

Rock is collateral damage in a war to silence men. Will Smith is a Trojan horse in that war.