Wendy Williams Plays the Tribe Card

Tamera Mowry, who happens to be a person of mixed race, appeared on The Wendy Williams Show yesterday. The subject of Tamera’s relationship with Fox News reporter Adam Housley came up and Williams made a curious observation:

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“I looked at him and he doesn’t look exactly like Jim Belushi, but he looks like from the same tribe…”

Now, let’s just say that Wendy Williams is not wasting a lot of time at Mensa Conventions and we doubt she’ll be going on Celebrity Jeopardy anytime soon (let alone Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader) but this ignorance transcends intelligence, this is a reveal into a mindset.

What would make Williams think it was appropriate to categorize a person into “tribes”? Doesn’t she realize that the mere presence of these two young women, the product of a black mother and an Italian father, represents the progression of our society to look beyond race, ethnicity and yes, tribes and to judge a human being based on the content of their character? Tribes are for Afghanistan, not America.

And, let’s not overlook the double-standard involved in a talk show host feeling comfortable to discuss caucasian men in terms of tribe based on similar phisical characteristics. Can you imagine Jimmy Fallon telling Jamie Foxx: “Dude, anyone ever tell you that you look like you came from the same tribe as Bobby Brown?” Or how about Bill O’Reilly questioning Margaret Cho: “No, clearly you don’t come from the same tribe as Lucy Liu, but you do look a lot like that guy on Heroes, same tribe or different tribe?”

It’s obnoxious and crass and ignorant and insulting (did I mention obnoxious?). But, on the positive side, how amazing and graceful were Tamera and Tia in handling this?

In an age where we almost expect child stars to grow up to be arrested or addicts or worse, it’s pretty refreshing to see that the two lovely twin sisters who we first met on the network sitcom ‘Sister, Sister’, have grown up to be poised, responsible and intelligent young women.

Is it a coincidence that the ‘Twitches‘ stars were raised in a religious setting, their father was in the military, they both attended conservative Pepperdine University and they are often seen wearing ‘WWJD’ bracelets? If only other child stars had been raised with similar, traditional values. If only Wendy Williams had.