For some reason, cable media seems to think that Donald Trump is capable of addressing the nation and this crisis of white supremacy we are now in -- once again. And so it came to pass that Yasmin Vossoughian read the script like a good cable news anchor does, and in return got a history lesson from Tiffany Cross.
The question from Vossoughian was this: Would it have mattered if Trump had addressed the nation about George Floyd and the problem of white supremacy?
Tiffany Cross took that question and ran with it:
In 2016 he encouraged people to behave violently. He encouraged someone If you see someone about to throw a tomato, knock the hell out of them. He encouraged people to get violent at his rallies. We saw one of the MAGA attendees sucker-punch an attendee. And recently in an interview with Breitbart he suggested people with guns are on his side, the military, the police, the bikers.
So I don't think America expects anything from Donald Trump other than what we've routinely gotten.
Cross was just getting warmed up and to her main point, taking media and the politicians who purr "this is not who we are" to task first.
I'll tell you when I routinely hear well-intentioned people say 'This is not who we are.' These type of violent revolutions are as American as apple pie and as old as the battle of Jamestown. Until we stop perpetuating a false narrative about who this country is and confront a reality of historic white supremacy systems that helped get us here I'm afraid to see that history will continue to repeat itself.
That should have been sufficient, but Vossoughian pushed Cross on her statements about "this is not who we are," and so Cross delivered a 90-second response that should be the preface to all history books forever and ever, amen.
America was not built on freedom and equality. It was built on the backs of stolen labor, by the enslaved people. And that system has carried itself and rippled through time, rippled through generations, rippled across this country and been a stronghold. The reality is, yes, we saw George Floyd get lynched and murdered on camera and that is heartbreaking. But the truth of the matter we have to start addressing is that the American system of white supremacy that has had its foot on the neck of Black people since this country's inception.
We have to start speaking that honest truth, because as long as we ignore that truth we provide a safe haven and space for systems of white supremacy to continue and permeate our political systems and even the mainstream media landscape. We have to confront those things and bring them to a screeching halt or otherwise we will see white supremacy as it's always been this country's greatest weakness bring this country to heel.
This is the moment to confront it. And by confronting it, she is not talking about Black people who face it every day. It is the white people who have to confront it and bring it to heel.
(h/t Shoq via Twitter)
