Antiracist writer and educator (and Tennessean) Tim Wise gets some air time on CNN to ask the question that’s on everyone’s mind, “when will Republican leaders take a stand against the kind of rhetoric that stokes white racial resentment?” Or, I might add, are they so desperate for power that they will continue to allow the most radical fringe to speak for them?
LEMON: OK. So we are going to continue our discussion now over the health care rallies and the tone of what’s going on in the country. Tim Wise joins us. He’s frequent here on the show. The author of “Between Barack and a Hard Place” and among the most prominent anti- racist activist in the country. Thank you, sir. Always good to see you.
TIM WISE, AUTHOR “BETWEEN Barack AND A HARD PLACE”: You, too.
LEMON: You heard the chairman from Florida say no, it is not race.
WISE: I did.
LEMON: It does a disservice. You heard David Sirota say it is the elephant in the room.
WISE: Right. Well like I said in the show before, it is the background noise of a lot of the opposition, not all of it but a lot of it. You know, when you have someone like Glen Beck saying as he did about a month ago that the health care debate isn’t really about that. It is just reparations for black people, where you have Rush Limbaugh yesterday on the air saying first that community service is the first step towards fascism, which is bizarre even for him.
And then almost immediately after that saying one of the problems with America is too much multi culturalism [This is one of local talker Michael DelGiorno's favorite lines!]. You wouldn’t say that unless you are trying to stoke white racial resentment. And so when you say those things, I want to know when are Republican leaders going to condemn that kind of rhetoric because that is where race is being interjected. It is interjected by us, it’s interested by the leading talk show hosts in this country.
Read the rest of the transcript.
Hat tip: Crooks and Liars
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