There’s a dastardly wave of layoffs unraveling America, and it started with Black women. That’s why they’re selling us a white rapper who sings R&B. Whenever we have bigger fish to fry, expect the mainstream to hand us canola oil and hormone-dipped chicken.

Jack Harlow doesn’t annoy me. He’s too underbaked, blasé, inoffensive, and boring to make a difference. But what he stands for? That part gets under my skin.

His gimmick, a skin-deep affiliation with Black culture, pops up every few cycles to browbeat me into believing music doesn’t have color. That we’re all in harmony. That only God can judge us. That war is not the answer. Name your platitude and this plasticky, Drake-jiving, artist will provide the sheet lyrics. When you least want the reminder of insidious whiteness mocking your plight, there he is.

You’ll never be safe. You can’t walk alone at night. Your hopes and dreams will wither in the dusk. All because a mediocre white man decided he could do what you do better than you and make more money doing it. Jack Harlow is the founding principles of the United States. He’s a thief. Talking about his latest album — this wigger act or that one — is beside the point.

Because what will his albums ever do? The most useful note about him is the hip-hop term that defines his name. “Jacking for beat” and “jacking styles” always meant stealing. They will steal from you. Wages, youth, pop icons, you name it. Its all up for grabs.

The AI revolution — the one that’s supposed to be taking and replacing jobs — is so familiar it’s ironic. I remember the last time Whiteness obsessed over a free labor answer to the mass production problem. Except now, instead of snatching up people, stealing families and land, they’re using displacement and the promise of a technocrat utopia. They’re using AI-generated video to make new minstrels. They’re using AI pop stars to sing Auto-tuned lullabies before the apocalypse. They’re using Jack Harlow to imitate Mos Def and Talib Kweli.

I write a lot about my dad here. He was a Rastafarian, a Black nationalist, the kind of person it was hard for a young Black boy to be around because he thought about race so much. He thought about it critically, heavily. Why can’t he just let me enjoy things, I used to wonder. He wasn’t easy to decode when I was a child.

But then I grew up. I saw Eminem become the most popular rapper to the delight of middle Americans who’d adopt him as their patron saint of dollar beers and hot dog water. I saw the first Black president, and after him, the first fat white billionaire president to make his entire rise about insulting the first Black one. I saw January 6th and the mock trial to name a culprit other than whiteness. I saw the war in Iraq bloom death under missile shadows and cover 9/11 ashes with even more soot. I saw the war in Iran close up a million files.

Jack Harlow isn’t interesting enough to remake history. We are not interesting enough to remake history.

I understand my dad much better now. He had a sense of humor about the American empire. While it despises everything Black and joyful, it relies on our resilience to see itself. While it suppresses everything Black and bold, it depends on our resistance to grow stronger. The laughs we enjoy from that predictable Jack Harlow trick are the perfect cure for disgusting times.

That’s how hard we should laugh every time MC Okey Doke drops. Laugh like that when the curly-haired white boy jumps on stage to freestyle at the talent show. Laugh like that when the white boy movie star dresses like NSYNC at the Awards show and gets scuttled out in shame. Laugh like that when the white soul singer croons her next Aretha impression and the numbers don’t look like what she’s used to looking like. Laugh a big ol’ hearty, run-the-out-the-room crying laugh. Laugh a knee-slapping, white chompers and big-lipped laugh. Laugh like you can’t breathe next time the white rapper comes out with the tapered fade and the leather jacket talking ‘bout whips and chains. Laugh because you know that whip, you know which chain he means.

Laugh so hard they question just what the hell we’re laughing at.