Midnight on The Independents: Is it Racist? Sherrod Small, Jim Norton, Lou Dobbs, Rich Benjamin, Deneen Borelli, and Your Conflicted Co-hosts Have That Whole Conversation Thingie

The Friday
night installments of The
Independents on Fox Business Network have been organized
around a single theme, such as
sex, or
sports, or
millennials. Tonight, to play it safe, we’ve decided to take
the scarequotes off of “conversation about race,” and see what
happens when you try to talk real about a really difficult
topic.

So! The broadcast starts straight away with a clash between Rich
Benjamin, author of
Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White
America, and Deneen Borelli, author of

Blacklash: How Obama and the Left Are Driving Americans to the
Government Plantation. The two tussle it out over code
words, whether “Obamacare” is racist, and more. Then comedians
Sherrod Small and
Jim Norton join
co-hosts Kmele Foster, Kennedy, and Matt Welch in debating the
R-quotient of everything from Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie!”
outburst, to Miley Cyrus’ twerking, to Michael Richards’
comedy-club N-strafing of a heckler, to Joe Biden’s weird remarks
about Indians at 7-11s. How and why does so much comedy seem to
hinge on poking the outer limits of comfort on stereotypes? Tune in
at midnight ET to find out.

Then, to calm things down a bit, it’s time
for a discussion with FBN host and longtime immigration-policy
critic Lou Dobbs on whether xenophobia has had anything to do with
the immigration debate in the United States, and whether that
matters. Then Benjamin and Borelli are back to talk about whether
the drug war is racist, and even whether talking about racial
disparities in enforcement policy or other outcomes is a good or
bad thing. And since that scab won’t pick itself, Kmele Foster then
produces audible winces by dropping a few N-bombs and talking about
the double-standards of acceptable speech in 2014 America.

You will give air-high-fives, you will throw things at the
television set, you will laugh, you will scream, but I’d wager that
you will be entertained and intrigued by this attempt to talk like
human beings about one of the greatest issues that divides said
creatures. And remember! For this one last night, The
Independents‘ usual 9 pm slot is pre-empted by live coverage
of the frankly kinda awesome
Barrett-Jackson car auction, so the show will broadcast at
midnight, then be repeated at various times over the weekend. Send
your worst jokes on Twitter to @IndependentsFBN!