Your Racism Is Showing: Sen. Tom Cotton Describes Slavery As A “Necessary Evil”
The when it comes to American history, and the country’s original sin of is mind-boggling.
2020 is not letting up in regards to being a terrible year full of outrageous moments. Case in point, we shift our focus to Sen. Tom Cotton and a ridiculously head*ss statement he made.
While caping for a bill that would stop federal funding for a new and expansive curriculum on slavery that some school districts are considering using to train educators, Cotton expressed some ridiculousness. When speaking about slavery, he described it as a “necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as (Abraham) Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”
Speaking with the local newspaper The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Cotton defended his bill that he is pushing that would stop federal funds from being used to support K-12 schools that teach the New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning The 1619 Project. Cotton’s hating on the project is no secret, with him falsely describing it as “a distortion of American history,” further adding “The 1619 Project is left-wing propaganda. It’s revisionist history at its worst.”
Cotton’s bill is basically dead on arrival and has little chance of passing, but that’s not stopping him from flapping his gums. Cotton claims his bill won’t take away “much money,” and added, “but even a penny is too much to go to the 1619 Project in our public schools. The New York Times should not be teaching American history to our kids.”
The Arkansas Senator states that instead of accurately portraying America as “an irredeemably corrupt, rotten and racist country,” the country should be viewed “as an imperfect and flawed land, but the greatest and noblest country in the history of mankind.”
Nikole Hannah-Jones, who wrote The 1619 Project, responded to Cotton’s criticisms directly tweeting at him:
“If chattel slavery — heritable, generational, permanent, race-based slavery where it was legal to rape, torture, and sell human beings for profit — were a “necessary evil” as @TomCottonAR says, it’s hard to imagine what cannot be justified if it is a means to an end.”
Cotton’s statement also opened up a can of worms with Twitter users pointing out that Cotton’s family has owned a large farm in Arkansas for seven generations, owned and used slaves, and fought on the side of the confederacy. He has not confirmed that, of course.
Like the late Maya Angelou said:
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
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Photo: Tasos Katopodis / Getty
