I was writing a blog about Trump’s tax cuts while listening to Real Time with Bill Maher Overtime. And Tara Setmayer’s statement simply blew me away coming from someone who should know better.
Tara Setmayer’s concern about shades of chocolate says much
There are subtleties to identity that can be damaging not because of what is said explicitly but what one infers. Tara Setmayer was Exhibit 1.
Setmayer made a fool of herself disputing tax cuts with multimillionaire Nick Hanauer who understands that they hurt the economy in its current form. The wealth and income disparity mean any tax cuts skewed to the wealthy further enriches a few and does nothing to increase demand which is needed to accelerate any economy.
Tara would further show that she is a shallow being during the Overtime segment. A viewer asked a question about the bipartisanship of sexism. Now this is a comedy show so referring to Fox News’ recent problems with sexism, misogyny, and racism, Maher used a Bill O’Reilly quote.
“Did you ever work at Fox News,” Bill Maher asked. “Have you ever been called hot chocolate?”
The questions took Tara Setmayer aback for all the wrong reasons.
“Well, I would actually probably be called like mocha, mocha-macchiato or something given my,” Setmayer replied with disapproval. “Not chocolate. But no. Not at Fox News anyway. But I have appeared there and appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s show years past. I hadn’t experienced that. But I do have friends that have been over there. And you know there was a very problematic culture obviously. But I think it was also a reflection of the generation of the people who ran it.”
Now, where do I begin? I would expect an intelligent black woman or any woman to be concerned immediately about a man referring to her by any physical attribute especially one with whom she had no personal relationship. But Tara immediately latched on to being referred to as chocolate. She wanted her color tone differentiated. She is not chocolate but mocha-macchiato.
Why do folks who refer to themselves as people of color concern themselves with the gradation of color? Folks who refer to themselves as white never do so in the context Tara did. Notice that she caught herself early but still could not help the colorization modal — “mocha-macchiato or something given my …” Given her what? And why does it matter? I know many can enlighten the community in this post’s comments. Suffice it to say this is what race as a social construct created by the concept of white supremacy has unleashed.
Later on, the statement got even worse. She acknowledged the Fox News culture even though she did not refer to it as sexist or racist but then gave them a tacit pass by blaming the culture on the leadership being from a generation past. Bill Maher would have none it. He castigated her plantation thinking. She attempted to clean up her statement, but it simply made it worse as she just repeated the generational good old boy defense.