ABC legal analyst Sunny Hostin told her co-hosts Monday on “The View” that “a lot of Americans” are attempting to erase the contributions of black people.
Co-host Whoopi Goldberg said, “Only about 12 states have a black history mandate while 18 have passed laws severely limiting this curriculum. Now it’s a vital part of American history so what’s everybody so nervous about? Why are you nervous? The days have passed. We’re here now. Why is everybody freaking out about what was? Why can’t we talk about what was? We talked about what was with everything else.”
Hostin said, “I think people in America have been playing a long game. And I often say it’s conservatives, but it’s a lot of Americans. And I think what they do is they not only erase the bad stuff that may make people feel bad, like slavery, which is responsible for the very foundation of this country. What concerns me even more is that they erase the contributions of people that don’t look like them. So they erased the contributions of someone like Bayard Rustin. They erased the the contributions of indigenous people. They have erased from history and teaching our children that the freezer was developed by a black man, that the first open heart surgery was performed by a black man, that the GPS technology that we all use today was developed by a black woman.”
She added, “And the reason that they are erasing those contributions is because then you can other rise someone as less than you are, because you haven’t contributed to this society in the way that my culture has. And I think that is so sad because what is supposed to be the very foundation of this country is that we are all equal. What happens is when you’ve had privilege for so long, equality feels a lot like oppression.”
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