Phillip Schofield questioned racism against Meghan Markle and this black academic wasted no time correcting him

It's fair to say that we all expect slightly deranged reactionary views when it comes to issues of identity politics from one of the two biggest straight white male presenters on daytime TV, but not Phillip Schofield.

He is supposed to be the teddy bear to Piers's python; the kindly grandpa to his sexist uncle. Phillip is supposed to be... well not woke exactly, but at least nice enough to make a point of avoiding offending people, even if it does cost him ratings.

Which sort of makes yesterday's interaction on This Morning even more painful to watch.

Speaking to Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, a lawyer, author and intersectional feminist activist, he demanded she offer "examples" of racist coverage of Meghan Markle.

People of colour have been pointing out over and over again for years that the way she's been teated by the public and certain sections of the media is steeped in elitist, xenophobic racism. Yet it would seem this somehow passed the boomer by. Mos-Shogbamimu had the perfect response, saying:

When people keep asking 'what examples?' it makes me question, where have you been the last two years? What have you been reading?

Schofield then went full white fragility, saying:

I've been reading some criticism. I haven't personally read anything that I could say is based on racism.

So basically, a hyper-privileged white man doesn't see racism, therefore he questions whether or not it happened, despite a black woman sitting two feet away telling him about her lived experience.

Mos-Shogbamimu, without missing a beat, replied:

Let me explain what racism looks like through the lens of white privilege. White privilege whitewashes racist and inflammatory language as unconscious bias. It perpetuates the bigotry of intolerant white people as ignorant. It defends and protects their private views once spoken as 'misspeak', and then camouflages racist behaviour as 'error of judgement'.

We'll wait while you stand up to applaud.

Over on Twitter, people have many, many thoughts.

Many pointed out the hypocrisy at play here, given his demand that Jeremy Corbyn apologise for antisemitism in the Labour Party just last month.

Ultimately everyone agreed that this whole debacle is peak white privilege, and Schofield really should know better.

The irony of it all is that the exchange came just after Mos-Shogbamimu literally said:

It is not the job of black people and ethnic minorities to educate white people on racism perpetuated by white people. White folks need to educate themselves on racism.

Perhaps Schofield wasn't listening because he was too busy thinking of his own very important viewpoint on what women of colour experience.

In case anyone has a direct line to Schofield and he is still confused by the whole concept of racism, here's a list that BuzzFeed put together exemplifying exactly what we're all talking about.

Please forward.

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