[WARNING: OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE]
Former South Carolina state representative and CNN political analyst Bakari Sellers said Monday on “Anderson Cooper 360” that Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) role as a lawmaker made his comments more concerning than if he had used the “n-word.”
In a soundbite from “The Joe Pags Show,” last week, Johnson said, “I’m also criticized because I made the comment that on January 6, I never felt threatened because I didn’t. And mainly because I knew even though those thousands of people there were marching on the Capitol were trying to pressure people like me to vote the way they wanted me to vote. I knew those are people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law. So I wasn’t concerned. Had the tables been turned —this could get me in trouble — had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election, and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned.”
Sellers said, “You know when people are making racist comments, the first thing they want to push back with is simply say, you know, ‘You can’t play the race card,’ but it’s our job to call it out. I’m not surprised, and I am not disappointed anymore. Nothing about this is new. This is as American as American can be, but I’m troubled because this coming from the highest part of the land. This is coming from the United States Senate, the United States Congress.”
He continued, “Racism in this country is a power construct. People like Ron Johnson have the power and the ability to implement racist policies even when they’re ignorant to the fact that what they are doing is racist. This is not about somebody calling you n*****. I get called that enough in my Twitter comments. I get called that in my messages when I leave CNN every single day. It’s not about that. It’s about something more than that. It’s about the systemic oppression. It’s about the systemic racism and people like Ron Johnson who play a role in it and are so ignorant to the fact to the role they play that they sit there and simply turn their back and say don’t play the race card.”
Sellers added, “Either you’re using racism as political currency, which is cowardice, or you so simply are ignorant and do not know the language you’re using is racist and hurtful.”
He concluded, “Just think about Ron Johnson being more sympathetic to cop-killers and anti-Semites and people carrying Confederate flags than Black folk protesting. But it not just about Ron Johnson. That’s what I’m trying to tell folk. When we talk about systemic oppression, imagine the Ron Johnson that works at Wells Fargo, who is your loan officer and looks at you as less valuable than a white guy who comes in there. Or imagine Ron Johnson as your professor or teacher who looks at you as less intelligent. Imagine Ron Johnson as a police officer that pulls you over on the side of the road who thinks you’re more of a danger than a white boy. See, that is what we’re talking about when we talk about this systemic injustice. Ron Johnson creates the laws. We got to call it out and push back.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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