By Richard B. Muhammad
South Carolina Republican Tim Scott made noise with a Washington Post op-ed pointing out the problem with fellow GOPer Steve King of Iowa using “offensive” buzz words, how Republicans pay for the use of such words and the need to cease using such words.
Rep. King’s recent rejected declaration? “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization–how did that language become offensive?”
“I will admit I am unsure who is offended by the term ‘Western civilization’ on its own, but anyone who needs ‘white nationalist’ or ‘white supremacist’ defined, described and defended does lack some pretty common knowledge,” the one of three Black senators wrote in January 2019.
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“Some in our party wonder why Republicans are constantly accused of racism–it is because of our silence when things like this are said,” he added.
Bravo Sen. Scott.
If only, you had stopped there.
Unfortunately, he went on to falsely equate Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan with racial “extremism” that’s a hallmark of Republicans.
Mr. King tried to draw a narrow definition of White Nationalists and White Supremacists, citing heinous racial crimes committed by avowed believers in this All-American doctrine.
But the belief Whites are superior and should be in the superior position are ingrained in America’s DNA and the political DNA of his Republican Party.
The great Republican Abraham Lincoln said, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races … while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
That Mr. Scott is an expression of White Nationalism and White Supremacy.
Consider the current White House occupant who called Haiti and other Black and Brown nations “shitholes,” and asked why can’t America just import more good Scandinavian White people?
“For years, Trump perpetuated a conspiracy theory former President Obama, the nation’s first black president, was not a U.S. born citizen because he was from Kenya. Trump launched his campaign by referring to Mexican immigrants as ‘drug dealers,’ ‘rapists,’ ‘killers’ and ‘murderers.’ … Over the summer, Trump blamed ‘many sides’ for neo-Nazi violence,” observed Newsweek in a January 2018 article.
It listed racist remarks from a few American presidents:
Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower said “white Southerners ‘are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes’ while discussing the desegregation of schools. Eisenhower was not particularly supportive of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision that deemed the racial segregation of schools unconstitutional.”
Republican Richard Nixon “referred to black people as ‘Negro bastards’ who live like ‘dogs.’ … Nixon’s bigotry was manifested in his policies. In a 1994 interview, John Ehrlichman, who served as Nixon’s chief domestic advisor, said the administration launched the war on drugs to go after the ‘antiwar left and black people.’ ”
Republican Ronald Reagan “painted black women as ‘welfare queens.’ … Reagan has been widely been attributed with racializing the debate over welfare in the U.S. This continues to impact both perceptions and policy regarding welfare, which has had a detrimental impact on communities of color, research shows.”
A 2017 Washington Post piece said: “In so much as Reagan cared about a civil rights issue, it was not school integration or affirmative action but rather reverse discrimination against white men. Though the rhetoric of reverse discrimination preceded the Reagan presidency and had spread considerably among affirmative action opponents in the years before his election, it was the Reagan administration that first enshrined such assumptions in policy.”
Remember Republican George Herbert Walker Bush and his infamous Willie Horton 1988 presidential campaign ad? It used crimes committed by a Black man on furlough to win an election by using racial paranoia to court White votes. “When a political action committee used Horton’s mug shot in an attack ad, he became part of an infamous election-season strategy to stoke fear and racial anxiety among white voters,” the Post reported.
And, as the New York Times noted, the ghost of Willie Horton lives: The “Horton episode led to far more overt plays to race in American politics, all the way up to President Trump. ‘In some ways, the Willie Horton ad is the 1.0 version of Trump’s relentless tweets and comments about African-Americans.’”
Sen. Scott, your party has a sordid record on race and has steadily used race to win votes, disenfranchise Blacks and consolidate political power. Today, it prefers a kinder, gentler approach–not the naked racism of Rep. King. So Min. Farrakhan, a man who points out the evil of this country and your party isn’t an extremist, he is actually a patriot. He knows America must face the mirror of her ugly history, repent and change, if she hopes to survive. But I’m sure that sounds extreme to White supremacists of all stripes.
Richard B. Muhammad, an award-winning writer, is editor in chief of The Final Call Newspaper. Follow @RMfinalcall on Twitter and get more at www.richardmuhammad.com.
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