Before we delve into the substance of the article at issue, let me express my gratitude to author David Kaufman for giving me another opportunity to post a brilliant cartoon by one of my heroes, New Yorker satirist/philosopher/humorist Charles Addams. If you read here often, you have seen his work highlighted periodically because it is so often appropriate. In this case, that cartoon above, which made me laugh out loud when I first saw it as a high school student, immediately leapt to mind when I read that Kaufman believes the little white figures in the “walk/don’t walk” traffic lights represent white people.

Did anyone, at the New Yorker, among its readers, among the millions of people who have seen that creepy but very funny drawing in the best-selling collections of Addams’ mordant humor think for a second that it had anything to do with race? No, because it didn’t, doesn’t, and until quite recently, before The Great Stupid spread hate, fear, darkness and toxic cretinism over the land, nobody would be so woke-mad and brainwashed to see racism in everything that they would come to such a bonkers conclusion.

Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself! The article appeared on an MSN “community” called “Level,” which is “for Black men offering the best commentary on race, identity and culture, as well as tutorials on how to improve your life. Men can visit LEVEL for advice on parenting, sex, relationships, finance, wellness, and more,” or, as in this case, to make themselves dumb as bricks. I began by saying that the first sentence would have stopped me from reading the piece, but the headline was almost as funny as the Addams cartoon, so I had to at least start the thing: “The Unintentional Racism Found in Traffic Signals.” It promised to give me another perfect example of the adage, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” (The unhinged reactions of “The Squad” to their crony paying the price for her anti-Semitism last week was another fine example.)

Here’s the first sentence offered by David Kaufman:

Washington D.C.’s pro football team. Aunt Jemima pancake products. Eskimo Pies.They’re all examples of the everyday racism that bombards people of color from the supermarket to the playing field.

• “A few months back, before Covid-19 kept us in our homes…

The Wuhan virus didn’t keep you in your home, your unthinking and craven compliance with the incompetent CDC and the totalitarian-minded local despots who sought to exploit the pandemic kept you in your home.

• …and George Floyd made us take to the streets…”

George Floyd didn’t make you do anything, nor did the actions of one brutal cop in Minnesota. Gullible acceptance of the rhetoric of a racist, violent, scam organization cleverly called “Black Lives Matter” “made” you “take to the streets,” doing no good, much harm, and helping to spread the virus that you claim kept you in your home as you simultaneously claim to have taken to the streets.

• ” I realize that White people like to exert control over nearly everything everyone does, I thought, but since when did this literally include trying to cross the street?”

The stupidity of this statement is epic. Is Kaufman really arguing that whites are responsible for the pedestrian crossing signals in Washington, D.C., Detroit, Chicago, and all the other cities overwhelmingly controlled by African Americans? How, exactly? Is he arguing that it is oppressive for governments to install safe-crossing signs and signals, though such powers have been accepted as basic to functioning government  for over a century?

• “My heart still sinks at the specter of teaching my sons to ask a White man for permission to do — well, anything.”

Yup, Kaufman is the racist. And later, he even acknowledges that the “White man” in the signal isn’t really white and isn’t really a man, which I’m pretty sure any 6-year-old grasps instinctively.

Well, analyzing logic employed by the rat in the wheel that clearly stands in for the writer’s brain is a fool’s errand. Later, he wonder, in the course of his White Supremacy conspiracy theory, “why this gender- and race-neutral messaging [that is “Walk/Don’t Walk” ] had been replaced by “little White men.”

It was done to save lives, after Jimmy Carter weakened the school’s obligations to teach English, and the public schools could no longer be trusted to teach children to read. That’s why.

When I encounter opinion pieces like this one, I wish I hadn’t learned to read.

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Pointer: Ann Cameron Siegal