{"id":150717,"date":"2021-05-05T18:12:31","date_gmt":"2021-05-05T18:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=5ec5d11502c0a51e5ca25cba644eb7cd"},"modified":"2021-05-05T18:12:31","modified_gmt":"2021-05-05T18:12:31","slug":"while-democrats-work-on-infrastructure-republicans-are-busy-defending-slavery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/05\/05\/while-democrats-work-on-infrastructure-republicans-are-busy-defending-slavery\/","title":{"rendered":"While Democrats Work on Infrastructure, Republicans Are Busy Defending Slavery"},"content":{"rendered":"\"U.S.<\/a>

As the nation grapples with fighting for racial justice and against police murders of Black Americans, Republicans have evidently found a different cause worth fighting for: making racist, seemingly unprompted defenses of slavery.<\/span><\/p>\n

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On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said that he doesn\u2019t believe that 1619, the year that enslaved Africans first arrived in the U.S., is an important date in history. People have \u201c<\/span>exotic notions<\/span><\/a>\u201d about important points in U.S. history, and 1619 isn\u2019t one of them, McConnell said.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cI just simply don\u2019t think [racism is] part of the core underpinning of what American civic education ought to be about,\u201d McConnell continued, speaking at the University of Louisville. McConnell has gone <\/span>on a tirade<\/span><\/a> against <\/span>The New York Times<\/span><\/i>\u2019s 1619 Project about slavery in the U.S. and Democrats\u2019 anti-racism agenda — though anti-anti-racism, as <\/span>commentators have pointed out<\/span><\/a>, is simply just racism.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Nikole Hannah-Jones, who headed the 1619 Project on slavery that has Republicans up in arms, <\/span>spoke on <\/span>CNN<\/span><\/i><\/a> about McConnell\u2019s comments. \u201cThis is not about the facts of history \u2014 it\u2019s about trying to prohibit the teaching of ideas they don\u2019t like,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Indeed, many Republicans have long embraced racism but have been emboldened by Donald Trump\u2019s style of being openly and brazenly so — to the point that some political journalists have noted that <\/span>the GOP <\/span>wants<\/span><\/i> to be called racist<\/span><\/a> so that they can <\/span>play the victim<\/span><\/a> and claim to be silenced by anti-racists.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Perhaps that\u2019s why Tennessee Republican state Rep. Justin Lafferty <\/span>on Tuesday<\/span><\/a> suggested that the Three-Fifths Compromise, which counted enslaved people as less than one whole person in population counts, was actually a good thing because it helped to end slavery. But it didn\u2019t; it only further \u201csanctioned slavery more decidedly than any previous action,\u201d <\/span>as historian Staughton Lynd wrote<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Or maybe it\u2019s why Colorado Republican state lawmaker Rep. Ron Hanks also defended the Three-Fifths Compromise <\/span>last month<\/span><\/a>, saying that it \u201cwas not impugning anybody\u2019s humanity\u201d to count an enslaved person as less than one human being.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Republicans evidently don\u2019t believe that it was just some elements of slavery that were positive, however; Louisiana Republican state Rep. Ray Garofalo Jr. last week said that schools should teach \u201cthe good\u201d of slavery alongside the bad. \u201cIf you are having a discussion on whatever the case may be, on slavery, then you can talk about everything dealing with slavery: the good, the bad, the ugly,\u201d <\/span>Garofalo said<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There is, of course, no \u201cgood\u201d to slavery, and it\u2019s abhorrently racist to suggest as such. Garofalo later retracted his statement, but only after <\/span>Democrats circulated<\/span><\/a> a video of him speaking on the \u201cgood\u201d of slavery that now has nearly a million views.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Regardless of the GOP\u2019s intentions, it\u2019s no coincidence that they are raging an attack on anti-racism just as rallies and protests for Black Lives have swept the country. Though the GOP\u2019s overt defenses of slavery all happened in recent weeks, the right has been waging racist attacks prominently in the past year. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For <\/span>months<\/span><\/a>, the right has been railing against critical race theory — scholarly work with the goal of dismantling oppression and white supremacy — despite lacking a clear understanding of what it is. They are claiming that <\/span>racism has been eradicated<\/span><\/a> in the U.S. even as Black Americans face death at the hands of the state simply for walking down the street or while <\/span>sleeping in their homes<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It\u2019s evidently not enough for the GOP that racism is alive and well in the U.S. — the party seems to be operating on a mandate to <\/span>enshrine racism<\/span><\/a> in the nation forever — and normalizing defenses of slavery appear to be part of that strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Latest \u2013 Truthout<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"U.S.<\/a><\/p>\n

According to GOP lawmakers, slavery and the Three-Fifths Compromise were good, but 1619 isn’t a year worth remembering.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1459,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13912,21275,4402,1753,4,784,276,1338],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150717"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150717"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150837,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150717\/revisions\/150837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}