Thursday on Boomberg Politics, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D) said President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” was a dog-whistle for African-Americans in the South.
Landrieu said, “On the issue of slogans, I think if you talk to people in the South they have things called dog-whistles, which is you speak certain words but it communicates another thought to us, and the ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan —of course America is already great, we are the greatest country that ever was and I think that ever will be. It was the ‘comma, again’ that sent a shiver down the spine of some people in the South, especially African-Americans. Because the first thing they heard was, ‘Well wait, when did you think American was great? And where was I or my father or mother or grandparents when that happened? And oh, by the way, during that period of time that you thought was so great, that wasn’t great for us.’ So actually, what we did not do in the last election was litigate what actually makes America great.”
He continued, “My sense of it is America has a lot of things that makes us great, but we really can’t be great if we are not good. And goodness is something that we have kind of left behind in the civic dialogue and we should get back to that.”
He added, “One thing that we ought to do is recognize every human being and the value that they have, irrespective of race, creed, color, sexual orientation, national origin, and not treat based on those characteristics but based on what they do. That’s the idea of America. It’s about merit.”
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