The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal said Friday on ABC’s “The View” that the United States Constitution is “trash” written by slave-owning white people.
Discussing his new book “Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution,” Mystal said, “Republicans are obviously trying to manipulate those laws, particularly the rights of minorities, women, and the LGBTQ communities, and I explain it in ways we can understand so we can fight them.”
Co-host Ana Navarro said, “I live in Florida, so I’m, like, on ground zero of where all of this is happening. I’m out of my mind about the bills banning conversations about race and ethnicity and LGBTQ, just even mentioning gender identity in primary schools…Are you arguing for throwing out the Constitution? Should the Constitution be thrown out? What do we do? Is it a living document, or is it a sacred document?”
Mystal said, “It’s certainly not sacred. Let’s start there. The Constitution is kind of trash. Again, let’s just talk as adults for a second.”
Co-host Joy Behar said, “What did you say?”
Mystal said, “It’s kind of trash. It was written by slavers and colonists and white people willing to make deals with slavers and colonists. They didn’t ask anybody who looked like me what they thought about the Constitution.”
He added, “This document was without the consent of black and brown people in this country and without the consent of women. I say if that was the starting point, the very least we can do is ignore what those slavers and colonists and misogynists thought and interpret the Constitution in a way that makes sense for our modern world.”
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