Wow! That was my first reaction to reports of what a U.S. senator said during a Donald J. Trump political rally over the weekend. He sought to label Black Americans as criminals.
It was as blatantly racist a statement as anything I’ve heard since the 1960s.
This came from the pie hole of Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, according to Yahoo.com:
As Republicans press crime as an election issue, Tuberville contended Democrats back reparations for descendants of slavery because “they think the people who do crime are owed that.”
“They are not soft on crime,” Tuberville said. “They’re pro-crime. They want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”
Holy … crap!
This is an individual elected from a state with a population that is 26% Black. He was elected in 2020 to the U.S. Senate with zero experience in elective politics. He is a former football coach who worked with dozens of Black athletes.
Still, he said this. At a Trump campaign rally. Oh, and get this: The crowd that heard it clapped and cheered the speaker.
“They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed. that.” I just felt the need to repeat that statement. It defies logic. Or humanity. Or anything resembling decent thought from someone elected to the U.S. Senate.
This is part and parcel of what has become of the Republican Party. It saddens me to say this, given that the party once held the key to enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Remember the “party of Abraham Lincoln?” It’s gone, man!
It’s been replaced by and large by something quite different, as exemplified by the mutterings of individuals such as Tommy Tuberville.
Black people are criminals, he says. Democrats demand reparations because those who “do the crime are owed that,” he says.
The English language cannot do justice to what is stirring in my gut at this moment.
