Knucklehead Of The Week: Race-Baiting ‘Journalist’ Nikole Hannah-Jones Call This Practice “A Legacy Of Slavery”

For Germany, their greatest national sin is undoubtedly the Holocaust. But for most other Western countries, including the United States, slavery is the single most reprehensible aspect of a nation’s history. This notion holds true for Great Britain, France, Spain, and scores of others. Slavery was a horrific crime against humanity. But like the Holocaust, slavery was unique in its horror, and drawing comparisons of other injustices to it are almost always ill-advised. So too is the practice of attributing modern phenomena as being remnants of slavery, because in doing so we trivialize the brutality of that horrible institution. Such was the case this week when Nikole Hannah-Jones gave the idea a try.

Winner: Nikole Hannah-Jones, discredited reporter and founder of the 1619 Project, declares the practice of tipping is “a legacy of slavery.”  

As we saw this week when Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson was making her own, strong case to be named the week’s top knucklehead, our friends on the left would have us believe that any criticism directed at a black woman is verboten, constituting an act of racism, misogyny, or both. But the fact remains: Black women are just as capable of doing and saying stupid stuff as members of any other race or gender. And Nikole Hannah-Jones proved that point this week.

On Monday, Hannah-Jones quickly deleted a tweet shortly after posting it, and it’s not surprising that she would have regrets and want it withdrawn. But as is the case with virtually everything else related to the internet, once something makes it onto the web, it’s out there forever. The contents of that tweet are as follows:

“Tipping is a legacy of slavery and if it’s not optional then it shouldn’t be a tip but simply included in the bill. Have you ever stopped to think why we tip, like why tipping is a practice in the US and almost nowhere else?”

And even though she deleted her original tweet, Hannah-Jones wasn’t backing off her stance as indicated by subsequent responses she gave to her critics.

So, what should we make of Hannah-Jones’ assertion? On its face, the idea sounds ridiculous, but is it? Yes, it most certainly is. The idea that giving someone a little extra money is rooted in racism sounds absurd because it is absurd.

Tipping is a show of appreciation and generosity, and if Nikole Hannah-Jones was making the claim that Americans are exceptionally generous, she would have a point. No country is more charitable than the United States. But the idea that giving folks money that’s not required is somehow rooted in slavery is beyond silly. Did slave masters tip their slaves? Were slaves working extra hard to position themselves to receive a few extra dollars? Of course not, because slaves didn’t even get base pay, let alone extra pay. They were property.

It’s also worth noting that Hannah-Jones’ point that tipping happens “almost nowhere else” is flat-out bizarre. Perhaps Nikole Hannah-Jones needs to get out and travel a bit more, but rest assured, not only do people tip service providers elsewhere, it happens in most countries. There are certainly variations to customary amounts and for which services people are tipped (as illustrated by guides such as this one) based on where you are, but tipping happens around the world.

Another excellent observation on the topic came from historian Phil Magness via Fox News who pointed out that tipping can be traced back to at least as early as William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which was written in 1602, seventeen years before Hannah-Jones targeted time frame of 1619. Hmm.

What’s really at work with this episode from Nikole Hannah-Jones is that she needs racism; or more appropriately stated, Hannah-Jones needs to be able to allege racism. Race-baiters like Hannah-Jones, Joy Reid, Al Sharpton, and Ibram X. Kendi make millions of dollars by playing the victim and playing identity politics. Race-baiting is big business, and they’ll point to anything and call it racist. We need not look any further than a few weeks ago for evidence when Hannah-Jones insisted that Europe was not even a continent, and its status of being a continent was merely a racist concoction.

Examples such as this one with Nikole Hannah-Jones indicate that anti-white racism is on the rise amongst leftists. Racism is alive and well. Racism still exists, unfortunately, and it doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon. And when clowns such as Hannah-Jones point to the most innocuous topics and cite racism, they dilute the argument, and they minimize the problem. If everything is racist, then nothing is racist. And it is for this reason that Nikole Hannah-Jones is a knucklehead.

Honorable Mention #1: Disney executives’ weakness in the face of the woke mob blows up in their face.

The Disney Corporation is in a real pickle, and they have no one to blame but themselves. They’ve been a left-leaning corporation for years now, and like many other such companies they’ve appeased a small but vocal number of woke employees. When the company was slow to condemn Florida’s parental rights bill recently – the one leftists are desperately trying to have labeled as the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” – those woke employees who are so accustomed to being catered to erupted. And this week Disney had an employee walkout as a result.

What’s really puzzling is why Disney isn’t standing their ground and asserting themselves. What they should be saying is, “We have over 200,000 employees who work for us, and only 500 or so walked out. All 500 of those employees have now been fired and we are actively seeking to replace them with qualified, appreciative candidates.” That’s how it’s supposed to work when you’re an employer. The owners and managers of the company decide policies, not a handful of emboldened wokesters.

Honorable Mention #2:  Man shows up to Everett, Washington court driving a stolen vehicle.

On Monday, KIRO-TV in Seattle reported that police arrested a man in an Everett, Washington courthouse after it was determined that he had driven a stolen pickup truck – with separate stolen license plates, no less – so he could appear in court for an unrelated offense of violating a no-contact order. Police noticed that the vehicle in question had exempt government license plates on it, ran the plates and determined that they had been stolen, and then ran the VIN of the vehicle and discovered that it had been stolen as well.

When confronted in the courthouse, the suspect claimed he didn’t know what police were talking about, even though the cops found the key to the truck in the man’s pocket, and his drivers’ license on the front seat of the stolen vehicle. And that’s not to mention the security camera footage showing the man arriving in the parking lot with the stolen truck.

Indeed, they walk among us. And here’s the most disturbing part of the story: People like this are allowed to vote. Think about it.

PF Whalen

P.F. Whalen is a conservative author at TheBlueStateConservative.com.  His work has appeared in multiple publications, including Human Events, the Western Journal, and American Thinker. Follow him on GETTR; he does not do Facebook and Twitter.

Enjoy HUGE savings at My Pillow with promo code BSC

Featured photo by Associação Brasileira de Jornalismo Investigativo, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons