Happy Friday. It’s time for another “difficult” conversation about race, and we have Tucker Carlson to thank.
In the hours after the Jan. 6 insurrection, the former Fox News host sent a racist text message to an unnamed producer that “set off a panic at the highest levels of Fox” and may have helped secure his ouster, the New York Times reported this week.
The text was part of a trove of documents amassed in the defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News. In it, he describes how he watched a video of violent Trump supporters attacking an “Antifa kid.” It triggered something in him, he said. “It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight,” he texted. “Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be.”
There’s a lot to unpack—“becoming” is doing a lot of work, for example. But for our purposes, let’s focus on Carlson's comment, “It’s not how white men fight." Ironically, thanks in part to Carlson and the culture of virulent white supremacy he’s helped popularize, that's exactly how many white men fight.
I’m thinking of Jordan Neely, the 30-year-old Michael Jackson impersonator who often performed in the New York City subway. He was also homeless with mental health issues. On Monday, he was in distress, agitatedly yelling at passengers that he was hungry and wanted to die.
While his outburst was sad, these things are not unusual for New York subway riders.
But on this particular day, a white passenger, unable to tolerate Neely’s anguish, put him in a chokehold for 15 minutes. The video, which I will not share, was brutal, and Neely died at the scene. The city’s medical examiner has ruled it a homicide, and the white passenger who killed Neely has not yet been charged or named, pending further investigation.
I’m also thinking about Ralph Yarl, the Black teen recently shot by a homeowner for ringing the wrong doorbell, and the growing number of “stand your ground” shootings that are lowering the bar for what can be justifiably considered a threat. The long history of regular white folks “policing” the behavior of Black people in public spaces—parks, pools, stores—is the toxic foundation upon which the current culture of fear and resentment thrives. But with the power of the airwaves, Carlson and his cronies made it acceptable, even thrilling, for aggrieved white people to take matters into their own hands at the slightest provocation.
Carlson ends his text pointlessly wondering how he had become part of the bloodthirsty mob he helped create. “I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this [Antifa] kid and would be crushed if he was killed,” he wrote. “If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?”
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
This edition of raceAhead was edited by Ruth Umoh.
