XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, mn.politics, alt.fun   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns, sac.politics   
   From: X@Y.com   
      
   He's from a slave state.  They're all used to losing big.   
      
      
    Tom Cotton of Arkansas probably thought he was being clever when he   
   accidentally said the quiet part aloud to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for   
   an article that ran Sunday – he said that slavery was a necessary evil to   
   ensure the creation of the United States of America.   
   Issac Bailey   
   Issac Bailey   
      
   Here is what he told the paper: “We have to study the history of slavery   
   and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise   
   we can’t understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the   
   necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a   
   way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate   
   extinction.”   
      
   It’s a belief likely held by millions of White Americans and also by a   
   number of white historians. It’s just that Cotton said it more plainly and   
   directly than most. It’s that ability – White Americans’ penchant for   
   compartmentalizing and rationalizing when it comes to issues of race – that   
   has made it possible for a president as inept and racist as Donald Trump to   
   have any chance of being re-elected.   
      
   Even amid the racial reckoning underway in America, there’s evidence that   
   that type of rationalizing remains. Cotton is merely Exhibit A. For   
   example, while polls show a growing percentage of White people are willing   
   to acknowledge that Black people are treated differently by the criminal   
   justice system, a majority tell pollsters they still believe Confederate   
   monuments should essentially be left alone – like Cotton does.   
      
   Cotton’s plainspoken demonstration of racist rationalizing to the Arkansas   
   paper began after he tried to use his position as a US Senator to cancel   
   and smear the groundbreaking 1619 Project, a New York Times initiative that   
   forced readers to see this nation’s founding anew, through the eyes of the   
   enslaved and those who came after them – instead of through the eyes of the   
   enslavers, as most traditional histories of America have done. Cotton wants   
   to deny federal funding to schools who use the 1619 Project as a teaching   
   tool. Several schools have adopted it; others plan to. I’ve used it in my   
   journalism classes at Davidson College and will again this fall.   
   NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 19: People participate in a march in Brooklyn for   
   both Black Lives Matter and to commemorate the 155th anniversary of   
   Juneteenth on June 19, 2020 in New York City. Juneteenth commemorates June   
   19, 1865, when a Union general read orders in Galveston, Texas stating all   
   enslaved people in Texas were free according to federal law. As the nation   
   comes to terms from a number of recent killings of black Americans by   
   police, Juneteenth is being celebrated and recognized throughout the   
   country in marches, memorials and services. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty   
   Images)   
   video   
      
   Related video Nikole Hannah-Jones on the case for reparations   
      
   Cotton shouldn’t be dictating what goes on inside classrooms, and those   
   serious about free speech should vigorously oppose his proposed law, which   
   would financially penalize school districts using the 1619 Project   
   curriculum by depriving them of federal professional development funds and   
   lowering their overall federal funding to reflect any “cost associated with   
   teaching the 1619 Project, including in planning time and teaching time.”   
      
   But that he attacked the 1619 Project in particular is telling. The project   
   is an unapologetic series of essays and other works that has upended   
   America’s foundational story like little else. Its authors, led by Pulitzer   
   Prize-winning New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, didn’t treat   
   the founders as near god-like wise men. Instead, they told the truth about   
   what it means for a nation to have been built on a contradiction: that all   
   men are created equal but that Black people needed to be in chains and   
   shackles. They explained why Black people decided to love a country that   
   hated it and why it took Black people to make real the words the founders   
   wrote but didn’t live up to.   
      
   The project, released in 2019, explored historical connections between   
   capitalism and slavery and showed why racism – slavery’s most obvious   
   legacy in this country – is one of the primary reasons we don’t have a   
   universal health care system like most of the developed world. The project   
   raised the kinds of questions – and presciently provided historical   
   references and citations – students need to grapple with during a time such   
   as this.   
      
      
   Cotton’s words to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reveal his motivation for   
   attacking the project: because he appears to be more comfortable with US   
   and Confederate myths about our country’s founding. It seems to offend him   
   that others don’t care for those myths as much as he does. After social   
   media erupted to call out his appalling remarks, he realized his error and   
   quickly tried to backtrack Monday. He absurdly argued that he never said   
   what he clearly said. And his buddies in conservative media have been quick   
   to help him try to spin his way out of his clear admission.   
      
   They want the genie put back in the bottle because if it isn’t, it will   
   make their jobs more difficult. It won’t be as easy to sidestep the   
   nation’s current efforts to confront racism.   
      
   Recall, again, what Cotton told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:   
      
   “As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the   
   union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put   
   slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”   
      
   On Monday, when his words were read back to him by Brian Kilmeade on Fox   
   News, he chuckled and said “that is fake news, Brian. That’s not what I   
   said.”   
      
   I’m not sure if we should call that a lie or just delusional.   
      
   He went on: “What I said is that many founders believed that only with the   
   Union and the Constitution could we put slavery on the path to its ultimate   
   extinction. That’s exactly what Lincoln said. Of course, slavery is an evil   
   institution in all its forms at all times in America’s past or around the   
   world today. But the fundamental moral principle of America is right there   
   in the Declaration – all men are created equal. And the history of America   
   is the long and sometimes difficult struggle to live up to that principle.”   
      
      
   Cotton, like so many others, clearly isn’t comfortable speaking truthfully   
   about this country’s racial history. That’s why they rely upon absurd   
   qualifiers such as “necessary” for an institution as evil as race-based   
   chattel slavery. In their telling, our great, wise founders were able to   
   defeat what was then the world’s lone superpower, ensure that this would be   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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