The Clapback Mailbag: Pause
Our weekly response to emails, DMs, messages and comments from our readers.
I spoke to my nephew last week about an extraordinary discovery in our family tree. (I’m writing about it later, but trust me, it’s good.)
The information blew his mind, just as I knew it would. When he asked how I discovered this information, I told him that it started with a random document I discovered. “You know how I am,” I explained. “Once I get sucked in, I go deep.” As soon as I said it, I realized I was talking to a 28-year-old drill instructor who was constantly surrounded by Marines, and I knew I had made a mistake.
“That’s craaazy, Uncle Mike,” he replied, with a juvenile laugh. “You gotta ‘Pause’ that!”
If you haven’t heard of the “Pause” game, it’s a ’90s-era linguistic game of Taboo played by people whose greatest fear is being called “gay.” While the performance of homophobic hypermasculinity is arguably the entire goal of saying “Pause,” the juvenile sport has experienced a revival lately thanks to “It Is What It Is,” the podcast hosted by tag team Pause champions, Cam’ron and Ma$e.
Even if you know about the childish phenomenon, you might not know that “Pause” is an adaptation of an ancient Caucasian ritual.
I’ll explain in today’s Clapback Mailbag.
First, let’s address a criticism we received about Andre Perry’s column on Trump’s marriage policy:
From: Tim
Read your piece about Trump’s plan to increase marriages. You left out one important fact. His policies don’t mention race, you did because you’re obsessed with it. Why didn’t you put that in there?
Dear Tim and Collecting Wisdom,
First of all, Tim, asking me to “put that in there” is craaaaazy!
But I understand that saying “Pause” would fit the literal definition of homophobia — “discrimination against, aversion to, or fear of homosexuality.”
The same is true for racial-phobia — a psychological condition defined by the fear of, or aversion to, discussing race.
Look, I understand that you get the heebie-jeebies when you hear someone mention the words “white” (Pause), “Black” (Pause) or “race” (Pause). But that doesn’t necessarily make you racist (Pause) or a white supremacist (Pause).
There’s nothing wrong with being a racial-phobe. I understand that you may have been raised in a religious environment (whiteness, Pause) where talking about race was considered a sin. Some people grew up in a single-race household and believe that discussing cultural differences will eventually destroy the white (Pause) nuclear family. Maybe you want to separate race (Pause) and politics because you grew up during an era (1776-2025) when white people (Pause) made up 98% of the presidents, 99.9% of governors 99.9% of Supreme Court justices, 99.3% of senators and 98.3% of congressmen ever elected.
But despite what Collecting Wisdom wrote, Andre Perry wrote an article about how this specific policy would affect Black people (Pause) for a site that’s about Black people (Pause). Claiming that Perry or I “think race is the only thing that’s important” is like saying that anyone who appears on ESPN thinks sports is the only thing that’s important, which brings me to something else:
Why isn’t race (Pause) important?
If the founding fathers, the U.S. Constitution, congressmen, slaveholders, secessionists, Civil War soldiers, Southern state legislators, segregationist governors, housing developers, banks, mapmakers, school districts, college admissions departments, doctors, lawyers, the U.S. military and every institution didn’t specifically create, perpetuate and protect policies, plans and strategies that excluded people based on race (Pause), no one would ever talk about race (Pause).
And if white people (Pause) would commit to fixing the problems that white people (Pause) created, perpetuated and maintained with their silence, no one would ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever have to hear anyone talk about this subject again. But the truth is, racial-phobes do not fear talking about race (Pause). This country would not exist as currently constructed if they did.
They don’t like to talk about whiteness.
That’s what they want to pause.
We received a ton of emails, DMs and comments on our story “attacking” Stephen A. Smith.
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