Georgetown University Professor and MSNBC Political Analyst Michael Eric Dyson argued that Republicans “want to retroactively remove” President Obama “from birth” and that President Obama “can’t be emotional” “Because an angry black man scares the heck out of many people” on Wednesday’s broadcast of CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
Dyson began by saying, “You can have critical viewpoints about the president. You can speak back to him. You can disagree with him. I don’t mean at all that that is racist. I’m suggesting that despite the ideological and political differences there’s an overlay of kind of racist reaction. For instance, a Congressman stands up in congress and shouts, ‘You lie,’ a governor from Arizona puts her finger in his face on the tarmac before the world, a reporter at the White House refuses to let him finish his press conference. This is unprecedented kind of stuff.”
After the discussion turned to accusations that President Obama is a Muslim, Dyson stated, “As Jerry Seinfeld says, not that there’s any problem with that, but the reality is, the guy’s a Christian. He’s been in the church for 20-some years and he’s been dismissed. You know, the Republicans don’t believe in abortion, but they want to retroactively remove him from birth. They want to distance him from his own body. And I think, look, when you think about the fact that Barack Obama has many more death threats than any other president, that the kind of disrespect and acrimony that’s been unleashed against him, and the birther movement, we’ve got a guy running for president right now who led a birther movement suggesting this man was not really an American citizen.”
He added, “[R]eal racial progress would be if a black man could say, ‘If I stood in the middle of a street and shot somebody, I would still get votes.’ That would be racial progress. … Because if Obama dreamed he could do that, he would wake up and apologize. He’d have to say, ‘I’m sorry for even imagining that.’ He has to be very cool, calm, dispassionate, and clinical. He can’t be emotional. People keep saying, ‘Why doesn’t the president get emotional?’ Why doesn’t he get invested?’ Because an angry black man scares the heck out of many people, right? Ask Cam Newton.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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