Dear Sen. Tim Scott - If America Is Not a Racist Nation...
We can’t solve our very real & serious issues if we don’t confront them, and it’s tragic that the GOP would use this national platform to once again deny America's most tragic reality.
President Joe Biden, last night, gave one of the best presidential speeches and policy proposals of my lifetime. It rivals Jack Kennedy in 1961, and, if passed, will undo much of the damage of the Reagan Revolution of the past 40 years.
In the Republican Party’s rebuttal, without seriously addressing even one single specific proposal of President Biden, Senator Tim Scott, the sole Black Republican in that body, instead went out of his way to promote the GOP idea that, in his words, “America is not a racist nation.”
This, of course, is the main GOP sales pitch for blocking and refusing to pass any kind of legislation that might make up for 400 years of violently racist economic, educational and policing policy in the United States.
It’s the rationale Republicans on the Supreme Court used to gut the Voting Rights Act in their Shelby County decision, which led to numerous Republican-controlled states passing racially-specific anti-voting laws within weeks that they continue to promote and expand on to this day.
It would be wonderful if it were true, but tragically is, today, a sad lie and a fantasy.
If America is not a racist nation, why did we kill tens of millions of Native Americans, keep their descendants in poverty, and continue to this day to steal their land?
If we’re not a racist nation, why were most of the iconic buildings in Washington DC, from the Capitol building to the White House, built by enslaved Black people?
If we’re not a racist nation why was it the law in the United States until the 1960s to separate the races and even outlaw interracial marriage?
If we’re not a racist nation why was it the law until that era that immigration had to follow racial patterns with almost exclusively white people legally entering the country? And why is it that Republicans want to go back to those racially-based immigration policies, and keep referring longingly to that pre-1960s period?
If we’re not a racist nation, why is it that Black people are killed disproportionately by police? When was the last time you heard a white guy say, “I can’t breathe” just before he was killed by the police?
If we’re not a racist nation why is it the people with identifiably white and Black names receive different numbers of callbacks from prospective employers across multiple studies over decades? Not to mention the pay differential that’s so well documented?
If we’re not a racist nation, why is the Maga movement almost entirely white and why do they keep talking about starting and winning a “race war“ in the United States?
If we’re not a racist nation, why does the Department of Justice clearly identify the greatest terrorist threat to this country as American white supremacists?
If we’re not a racist nation, why did the President of the United States refer to Nazis chanting that “Jews will not replace us,“ meaning that they thought Jewish billionaire George Soros was importing people of color into the United States to “replace” whites, as “very fine people?”
If we’re not a racist nation, why do schools in predominantly Black neighborhoods consistently perform poorly, even when attended by white students?
If we’re not a racist nation, why is the average white family worth over $100,000 and the average Black family worth less than $6000?
If we’re not a racist nation, why is it that we’re surprised when we see a TV show where the hero is the Black guy and the evil person is the white guy?
If we’re not a racist nation, why do white guys keep walking into churches and shooting Black guys, and white people keep calling the police on Black people for walking, shopping, working, birdwatching, attending school, caring for their own children, or driving?
And when was the last time you heard about white people having the police called on them by Black people and that white person ended up shot dead or had his neck crushed by the cops?
If we’re not a racist nation, then why are our billionaires and business leaders almost entirely white? Why is that also true of the Republican party, both in its base and among its elected officials?
If we’re not a racist nation, then why are Republican politicians in every state they control working as hard as they can to keep Black people from voting?
Eliminating racism as an animating force in the United States is a worthwhile and noble goal. But for a major political party to pretend that we’ve already reached that, solely so they can ignore it as an issue and continue to maintain the racist status quo, is obscene.
We can’t solve our very real and serious issues if we don’t honestly confront them, and it’s tragic that the Republican party would choose to use this platform and opportunity to once again deny simple reality.
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Racism is one of our country's founding wedge issues and as long as the oligarchs and billionaires can fool enough of the people all of the time, it will continue to make a useful weapon to perpetuate our nascent fascism.
Very well said, a sort of "Best of Times, Worst of Times" rhythm. Lots of white people can't admit there's a problem here because they would have to then admit they're part of the problem. Biden certainly seems to have learned from Obama's mistake in trying to be Mr. Nice Guy and work with people who despise him. He definitely is channeling FDR and LBJ at their best.