Top Black Racists of 2021: Winner #2: Professor Mutha Beep
We gathered round the bunker the following week for Episode Two (Twelve if you count 2020) of the WAZ awards. Rhubarb buds were peeking out of the raised beds in places. No open leaves yet but it reminded Cosmo we had rhubarb wine from last year in the root cellar. He set out half a dozen bottles on the bench along with canning pints we used for glasses. If you never tried it, rhubarb wine goes down smooth with blue cheese, crackers and smoked salmon. Roy Sequoia’d been elected Chairman again since he did such a good job last year. Taking his duties seriously, he wore a Moroccan tunic he’d found at the Salvation Army thrift store, and Tyrolean mountaineering hat with a pheasant feather. From under his cloak he pulled a rubber chicken with a red scarf which he pounded on the bench as a call to order.
“Okay white privilege ones. We are in session. Sergeant at Arms any old business?”
Cosmo shook his head, “No, man. Colin Kaepernick hasn’t called to thank us.”
“Ah well, he’s probably overwhelmed emotionally, as anyone would be. On to tonight’s business, then. As agreed, same rules as last year except we’re going to play musical millionaire victim charades. Also no repeats. Has to be a whole new crew. Make it more interesting ya know. Our Pal Al will wield the Chicken of Destiny and, git-box grenadier that he is, will be half the Deliverance Orchestra over there for candidate number two and a couple other hints.” He passed Al the rubber poultry with a grin. “Time to channel our inner Sherlock Holmes.”
Al with his guitar, and Ira with his banjo, huddled over the photo, Ira said something we couldn’t hear, Al nodded and changed his tuning. Ira’s banjo was ready to go. Al began to sing.
“You big fat woman, get yo fat leg offa me,
now you obese woman, get yo fat leg offa me,
you feel so good, scare the hell outta me.“
“Fat shaming?” Tim said. “Really you guys?”
“Nah it’s Lead Belly, lovin’ up them plus size honeys.” Al said.
“Jim Croce covered it, Tom Rush too.” Ira said. “Back in the day.”
Tim shook his head. “It’s wrong. It compromises people of non-standard body types. It’s well known large people are at a disadvantage socially, on airplanes, applying for jobs…”
“Disadvantaged? Are you saying we’ve got…light privilege?”
“Big fat woman, meat shakin’ on the bone.
Oh, big fat woman, meat shakin’ on the bone.
every time she dance, skinny girl gonna lose her home.
“It’s okay, Tim.” Al pointed the chicken, “It’s relevant.”
“Got a whoppin’ thigh, great big leg,
whoppin thigh, great big leg,
and every time she move…move like a soft boiled egg.”
“A fat, black woman. Way to narrow it down you two.”
Roy called for the next clue. Al got his honkey tonk going:
“On a Grayhound bus, well I’m travlin’ this mornin,’
I’m goin’ to Shreavport, down in New Orleans.
Been travlin’ these highways, been doing things my way,
It’s been making me lonesome, on’ry and mean…”
“Ol’ Waylon.” Sonny said. “They don’t make ‘em like that today.”
“Okay,” Roy said, “We got a fat, on’ry & mean, black woman. Closing in on her. And, New Orleans?”
Al shook his head and handed Ira another clue. They had a quiet confab. One shook his head, then the other did, then they both laughed as Ira began to sing in a thick East Coast accent.
“When I die, bury me low,
where I can hear, da petroleum flow,
A sweeter sound I never did know,
Da rolling mills of New Joisey.”
Tommy looked at his glass, “Now we’re really closing in. A fat, on’ry, black woman in New Jersey.”
“No, we’re close,” Tony pointed at the rubber chicken. “That chicken. When Al said it was relevant, he meant the chicken. That’s a clue. My Uncle Lenny, the lawyer, went to school in Joisey. Long time ago, back in the ‘50’s. He went to Rutgers. Rutgers mascot was a chicken! He kept a picture of him and the chicken in his office.”
Al lit up. “Rutgers’s chicken was Chanticleer, the rooster from Chaucer, but you’re right. It’s Rutgers. You’re almost there.”
“Probably not a student if she’s well known.” Jake looked around. “A professor then. A fat, black, onery, racist, woman professor at Rutgers University. Anybody got an idea? ”
Gene’s grin settled on Uncle Tim. “Bet he does.”
Tim rolled his eyes with a theatrical exhale. Put his palm to his forehead. “Professor Crunk.” He said.
We looked at each other, “What?”
“She goes by Professor Crunk sometimes. No idea why. Brittney Cooper’s her real name. A professor of Africana and Women and Gender studies.” He looked at Roy, “Some people think she’s a little over the top.”
“Ha!” Al shouted with glee. “Brittney Cooper! You did it! ‘A little over the top.’ he says. “Brittney Cooper: who says she’s fat because of white people.”
“She didn’t say that.”
“Really? On the Oprah Winfrey Network, Brittney was speaking to a self-segregated audience of 100 black women, no white girls allowed. She said black women couldn’t lose weight like white women.”
“Guess that explains why there’s no fat white women.” Sven observed.
“All these black women,” Al went on, “a lot of ‘em big soakers, too, nodding agreement when Brittney said,
“I HATE when people talk about black women being obese. I HATE IT! Because it becomes a way to blame us for a set of conditions dat we didn’t create…” [Brittney hates a lot of stuff.] “It’s literally dat the racism that you’re experiencing and the struggle to make ends meet actually means, the diet don’t work for you the same. She said “Blaming us for something we ain’t got no control over…We are living in the Trump Era! “
“We ain’t got no?” Ira said. “This is a college professor?”
“Yes Ira, ‘we ain’t got no…’ at a school that charges over $47 grand a year tuition.”
“I always considered Trump a nefarious man,” Roy said. “But I had no idea he’d been force feeding bacon cheese cake into black women. Well Al, did you check to see if she was slim in the Obama Era?”
“Certainly did, Roy. Brittney did a TED Talk right as the sun set on eight years of the Barack Obama Presidency.”
“And?”
“Looked like a hippo in a pantsuit,”
“As to professorial inflection; she affects that black racist sneer when she says ‘white people’ like she just stepped on dog shit with bare feet and it’s squishing up between her toes. ‘White people!’ Scrunches up her nose when she says, ‘white.’ Her face pulls back from her eyes to her chins like a cargo strap’s attached somewhere behind her cranium. In one interview, she’d dyed the top of her hair scrambled egg yellow, so it looks like she’s got a woolly Mexican tarantula up there. And every time she says ‘white’ the tarantula grabs her forehead, her nose scrunches up, the sneer stretches east, west, and skywards.”
“Before I forget, she also blamed Trump supporters for killing black people with corona virus.”
“Get out.”
Al took on an injured expression, “I quote, ahem;
“’Fuck each and every Trump supporter. You absolutely did this. You are to blame’”
“First cheese cake and now Covid.” Ira said. “Trumpster gets worse and worse.”
Al nodded, “The TED talk, by the way, was her claiming white people own time.”
“You’re shitting us.”
“I shit you not. White people own time.”
“All of it? Straight time, over time, half-time? Musical time? When Muddy Waters sings Hoochie Coochie Man in 4/4 time I own that?”
“I like a waltz myself. 3/ 4 time.”
“I want lunch time, break time, summer time, bed time, and party time.”
“Do we only own present time: or past, present, and future?”
“Past, present and future are time by definition.”
“Time’s an illusion, man. Past, present, and future all exist concurrently.”
“Cosmo could be right. Greenwich Mean Time and Alaska Time are different times at the same time.” Tommy said, “Myself, I’ll take Geologic Time. Always wanted to see those big trilobites, fifteen foot sea turtles, plesiosaurs…”
“Yah, me too.” Sven put in. “By golly, we’ll go with you. Me and Ole. We’ll deck-load the boat with plesiosaurs. No Fish and Game and hell with the limit.”
“That’s probably why they went extinct, Sven. Time-traveling Norwegians.”
Al pounded for order with his rubber chicken.
“Funny thing about her TED talk. Her stage affect was a whole ‘nother animal than when she was haranguing the hundred black women. No yelling for one thing. No hate in her face. Nope, she was all smiling, kind of condescending like a kindergarten teacher to a group of slow kids, which you might say she was, given those dippy white women in the audience eating that nonsense up. Gazing at her in adoration like she was Mother Theresa announcing the solution to global warming. I didn’t really notice the change until I saw her in a different interview she did with a black guy. Maybe it was the tarantula hairdo but she just let it all hang out as if she wasn’t on camera. It’s so terrific I saved it for last. Here’s Brittney in her own words put on the Internet in October, 2021.”
“Look, I think that white people are committed to being villains in the aggregate. ..,”
Sonny raised his hand, “When I mix concrete, the whole thing is the aggregate. Is she saying all white people are villains? French, English, Irish, Polish, Eytalians, and even Tim, here? ”
“What’s the definition for aggregate, Gene?” Roy asked.
“Noun,” Gene said. “Taking all units as a whole: the sum total.”
“There you have it , Sonny.” Al went on. “How about this one?”
“White lives are actually structurally overvalued.”
“Structurally overvalued? What does that even mean?” Jake asked.
Al shrugged, “Guess you’d have to pay $47 large at Rutgers to find out. Here’s another.”
“Look, I mean.. the thing I want to say is, we gotta take these muthafukas out. But, like, we can’t say dat, right?”
That cracked everybody up. “You can tell she’s a lady by the way she says mother-fucker.” Sonny snorted. “Hey Gene, is there a word for when you say something by saying you ain’t going to say it?”
“Apophasis.” Gene said, “Noun. Rhetorical device by which you say something by claiming you won’t say it.”
Al continued with another nugget.
“And that’s the thing. That white people don’t trust us to do because they are so corrupt, you know. Their thinking is so morally and spiritually bankrupt about power that they can’t let, you know, they fear viscerally, existentially letting go of power ‘cause they can not imagine another way to be…and isn’t it sad that, that is spiritually who they are…”
“ ‘viscerally, existentially’ nine syllables in two words back to back. Clearly a dumpling of higher learning.
“One that doesn’t need books.” Al said.
“Oh get out, Al. She’s a college professor. College professors need books.”
“Not this one. Brittney says: “So, white people come to the table and they like, ‘We ‘bout to run the board’ and what I know about black people is, we be like, ‘you know what, fuck it man.
We don’t need no books, we’ll beat you wit no books, right? That is the essence of like that kind of black improvisation, like, okay so you wanna win all the books but what if we just flip that shit, and be like, we assume you’re going to lie, cheat, and steal and kill and try to take everything but in the end, all you gone end up wit is some books. But we’ve out-strategigized you.”
“Holy Mother of God.” Tony said.
“That’s right, Tony. Brittney will out-strategize you.”
“Has she got at least a million?”
“Probably. When you add up salary and benefits from Rutgers, book sales..”
“Well I’d have to admit, I’m outstratagized.” Roy said. “But wait, are you saying she wrote a book? She said black people ‘don’t need no books.’”
“Try to keep up, Roy. Let me quote Brittney about her book, “This is a book by a grown-ass woman written for other grown-ass women. This is a book for women who expect to be taken seriously…This is a book for women who know shit is fucked up.”
Sonny pointed out, “If Brittney could grow cabbage the way she grows ass, she’d take the grand prize at the Alaska State Fair.”
“They say she’s on the best seller list, Sonny. Including a children’s book, (poor kids), speaking fees, she’s bound to be in the millionaire’s club. And so, finally, one more helping from Rutgers Big Woke Mutha Beep,”
“White people’s birthrates are going down…it’s super perverse and also they kind of deserve it.”
Tony looked at Al, “Are you telling me Rutgers knows she talks like that and she’s still employed?”
“They didn’t just not dump her, Tony. They embraced her in a Statement of Solidarity. The gist of it is, guys like us, not Professor Mutha Beep, are the racists. So sayeth the Rutgers faction of the American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers. That’s who gargled out the statement. Besides, Brittney says Rutgers won’t fire her. She got tenure.”
Tony shook his head, ”I’m glad Uncle Lenny’s not alive to see Rutgers today.”
Al handed Roy the chicken. Roy thumped it on the table to call for the vote. “For Uncle Lenny, then, and thousands of Rutgers alumni who used to be respected but today people point at them and laugh, ‘Rutgers! Brittney Cooper! Ah, Ha, Ha, Ha!’
“The time has come men of the West! Sol lustitiae et Occidentem Illustra. I call for the vote. All in favor of the WAZ for Brittney Mutha-Beep Cooper, say ‘Aye’”
“AYE!”
“Opposed?” Roy waited.
“Tim?”
Tim shook his head, “I believe I’ll abstain.”
“We’ve got winner then. From all of us here at the Woodshed Autonomous Zone: Congratulations Professor Mutha-Beep. Don’t expect us to take you seriously. We think you’re hilarious. That being the vote, not only do you get the WAZ to hang on your academic workout room, We will each donate six minutes of white people time to you. Yes! a full hour. Every day. If you’ll put it to good use walking in the fresh air. We’d also like to give our warmest thanks to Rutgers University for making those of us who never had the means to go to such an excellent institution as yours feel good for having missed it.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxwColpnj2U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1mw4ImMUmQ
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