This Is the Dumbest America Has Ever Been
Donald Trump's fact-free, lie-filled soliloquy of intrusive thoughts might have been the stupidest 18 minutes in American history.
For the first 89 years of its existence, America enforced a constitutionally protected institution that legalized “the systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another.” For the next century, every state was partially governed based on the legal doctrine that “race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities that produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.”
Every single one of the country’s founders either participated in, approved of, or helped create these legally sanctioned acts of racial bigotry. Redlining, race-based voter suppression, segregation, zoning statutes, housing codes, public works commissions, lending policies, hiring practices, public transportation rules and even the rules governing citizenship were unquestionably racist. Although we amended these laws and added provisions to the original charter, we still adhere to a constitution designed to execute these principles.
Still, America is not a racist country.
Chief among the written and unwritten protocols that govern the fourth estate is the “racist rule”—the idea that words that connote negativity should only be used as descriptors for an action, policy or behavior. According to this dictate that a racist white man made up, it is perfectly fine to accuse someone of doing something racist, but a truly objective journalist should never describe a person as “racist.” So, even though the people, laws, principles and the foundational document that define this constitutional republic all fit the literal definition of racism, as a journalist, I cannot say America is a racist country …
America is a country that does racist things.
