Eugene Robinson is “the Washington Post columnist, MSNBC analyst and author.” He appeared in his second capacity on yesterday’s edition of Morning Joe to discuss the Trump administration’s latest dystopian meme.
This one has everyone from Attorney General William Barr to Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany parroting the big lie that there’s no systemic racism in America. It even has Trump’s token black, HUD Secretary and brain surgeon Dr. Ben Carson, performing a virtual self-lobotomy on TV to explain why he too thinks this is so.
No doubt this is why host Mika Brzezinski could barely contain her disgust when she asked Robinson to share his thoughts. She did so after playing a video clip of Larry Kudlow providing the following rationale for this big lie:
In a Monday interview on CNBC, National Economic Council Director and President Donald Trump’s top economic advisor Larry Kudlow argued that systemic racism does not exist because former President Barack Obama won 79 million ‘white votes’ in his two presidential runs.
(CNBC, June 16, 2020)
I suspect Robinson would readily admit that he speaks better in writing than on TV. That he won the Pulitzer Prize “for his eloquent columns on the 2008 presidential campaign that focus on the election of the first African-American president” attests to that.
So who better to put Kudlow’s whitesplaining of Obama’s black-swan election into context, right? Except that Robinson just seemed flabbergasted, so much so that the only coherent part of his muttered thoughts came when he suggested that Kudlow’s response was tantamount to a white person saying,
I have a black friend; therefore, there’s no racism.
Ultimately, he joined Brzezinski in simply lamenting that Kudlow is just the latest person to sell his soul (and intellect) at the altar of Trump’s political ambition. But neither bothered to explain “the larger historic” implication of Kudlow’s response.
By contrast, far from being disgusted or flabbergasted, I just feel like saying, I told you so:
Many whites voted for Obama in 2008 more as a gesture of racial absolution than of political faith. And having thusly absolved themselves of their sins of racism (with this one, historic act), many of them now feel liberated to give way to their racial prejudices without fear of being called racists.
(“Romney vs. Obama: Race (Still) Matters,” The iPINIONS Journal, November 1, 2012)
That the election of the first black president marked a regression in race relations in America is an irony that shall live in infamy. But it’s just the tip of the tumor of insidious racism that must be excised from systems throughout American society.
Only then can we begin building the foundation for a New Reconstruction Era. And hopefully this time America will fully honor its Promissory Note to black folks.
Of course, we can’t begin building that foundation until we excavate Trump and Trumpism from the American landscape. November’s General Elections present a generational opportunity. So, as Obama would say, don’t just protest, vote!
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