Black Liberal Academic Says Democrats Should Apologize to Blacks for its Racist History
by Robert Oliver
In a spirited debate on the Sean Hannity Radio Show on Friday, September 30, Marc Lamont Hill, Ph.D. (www.marclamonthill.com), Associate Professor at Columbia University, ultimately agreed with Seattle-area Church of God in Christ Minister Rev. Wayne Perryman (www.wayneperryman.com), a plaintiff in lawsuit recently filed against President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, saying that the Party should apologize to Black Americans for the Party’s history of support of slavery, Jim Crow, Ku Klux Klan terror, Black Codes, lynchings segregation, etc.
The subject of the debate was current American race issues. Commenting on the subject of what group plays the race card the most:
PERRYMAN: When you look at the Democrat's racist background from slavery, Jim Crow, Black Codes, Dred Scott, Plessy vs. Ferguson,civil rights cases of 1881, when you look at their history, their connection with the (Ku Klux) Klan being their terrorist organization, I mean, when you look at their history, how do they have the audacity to sit down and evaluate and determine who else is racist when they refuse to apologize for what they did to African Americans? Through slavery and Jim Crow, they destroyed the lives of millions of Blacks. But when we ask them to apologize, they have consistently refused to apologize to Blacks for slavery, Jim Crow, and all the other racist policies that they had, and yet they want to sit down and call other people racist. That's worse than the pot calling the kettle black!
HILL: Well I disagree that Democrats are the only people who play a race card. I think again that is just factually untrue. I think you can find people on every side of the aisle. There isn't a month that goes by, much less a week, where someone on some side of the aisle makes some comment that's deemed racially provocative, and it's not Democrats. It's everyone.
PERRYMAN: I would like to know an example. The only ones I have ever heard that play the race card are the people on the left...
HILL: Let me respond cause I was still talking. One example might be (presidential candidate) Michelle Bachmann talking about how Obama failed Black America, right? When you make a comment like that...
PERRYMAN: Well, he has...
HILL: When you say that Blacks are better off under slavery than under Obama, but surely you can see that is a racially provocative comment. You can defend it because that's (unintelligble). But if you were honest with yourself, I think you can say that is a racially provocative comment. And I'm not saying that Democrats don't ever make them. But to say that no Republican ever makes one sounds borderline absurd. I mean to say that no Republican ever makes them.
Later on in the course of the debate Sean Hannity comments:
HANNITY: But there is a narrative that it's the Democratic Party, Reverend, that has been the party that has helped African Americans. You take issue with that.
PERRYMAN: Well, even Dr. Hill knows this that historically the Democratic Party was called the party of white supremacy. The Republican Party was called the party of nigger lovers. And we know that consistently the Democrats have fought against every piece of, as a party, fought against every piece of civil rights legislation, and they were behind Jim Crow, they were behind the Klan, Black Codes, Dred Scott, Plessy vs. Ferguson, they were opposition to Brown vs. the Board of Education, just consistently on and on and on. And we mention all of this in our 40-page lawsuit against the Democratic Party and Barack Obama. They can't deny history. That is history. That's what took place! The question of it is, are they ashamed of that history? I say yes because in the last 3 weeks after we filed this lawsuit, they removed 138 years of history off of their website. If you click on history on the Democrat's website now, the earliest date they refer to their history is 1930.
HANNITY: Dr. Hill?
HILL: I don't think anyone is in denial that there's a long and deep legacy of racism and white supremacy and active opposition to equality from the Democratic Party. I don't think anybody denies that. I would hope that the Democratic Party itself doesn't deny that. But I would also hope we could understand that the Democratic Party and its politics and its ideology in 2010 aren't the same as in 1950 or certainly not...
PERRYMAN: Well Dr. Hill, why won't they apologize? I mean from 2004...
HILL: Let me finish. Let me finish, please! I promise, I never cut you off. I think they should apologize. I think they should. I agree. They should apologize. They should do a public statement. They should have a telethon apologizing. And I don't have a problem saying that publicly, and I think I have been consistent.
Robert Oliver is a former newspaper editor and a writer in Southern California. Twitter www.twitter.com/interactionswst.
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