Republican Congressman Trent Franks (AZ-2) believes African-Americans are worse off today than they were during slavery:
“It seems like humanity is very gifted at hiding from something that’s obviously true. I mean in this country we had slavery for God knows how long. And now we look back on it and we say, ‘Well how blind were they, what was the matter with them, you know, I can’t believe, I mean four million, this is incredible,'” said Franks. “And we’re right. We’re right, we should look back on that with criticism. It is a crushing mark on America’s soul. And yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Half of all black children are aborted. Far more black children, far more of the African-American community is being devastated by the policies of today, than were being devastated by the policies of slavery.
YouTube video below:
Former Republican Congressman Bob Beauprez said something similar during his gubernatorial campaign and more recently, former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo floated the idea of bringing back Jim Crow laws.
Both Jane Norton and Cory Gardner are running as birthers, which is of course pandering to the 67 percent of the Republicans in Colorado who think the President wasn’t born in the United States.
Needless to say these are bad policy ideas (or lack there of), but since it seems to be the year of the tinfoil hat, could embracing right-wing black helicopter ideas like this be “good” politics for a Republican running in a primary?
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The teabaggers should send out a candidate questionnaire before the primary to find out which Republican candidate shares their views. Questions could include:
1. Do you believe the President is an illegal alien?
2. Do you believe ObamaCare will force your grandmother and special needs child to go before a death panel?
3. Do you believe the President and Democrats have already stolen your guns?
4. Do you believe the President loves terrorists and wants them to live next door to you?
5. Do you believe Democrats have raised your taxes and given your job to an illegal immigrant?
6. Do you believe that President Obama is the first President to use a teleprompter?
7. Do you believe the President is Muslim?
8. Do you believe Democrats are Nazi’s and Communists?
9. Do you think global warming is a global conspiracy?
10. Do you think FoxNews is fair and balanced?
Somewhere on the list needs to be:
Socialist
Fascist
F#**%t
Kos
Keith
Rachel
Better not help them by giving them a list.
Isn’t he basically saying that:
—-
Slavery was horrible, and “a crushing mark on America’s soul.”
Yet half of African -American children are aborted, which is more devastating on their community because the children are killed before they’e even born.
—–
I’m not a huge pro-lifer, but that seems like a fairly compassionate argument, not a racist one.
Without being shitty about it, could someone (GB included) enlighten me if I missed the point of GB’s anger about this statement?
Also, Jane Norton is not a birther. Period.
Is basically he believes that every Republican statement and moral stance are rooted in racism.
because there’s nothing racist about a congressman saying that African Americans were better off as slaves (the property of others, with all of the pain and indignity and horror that that entails) than as free Americans exercising a constitutional right (a right which, by the way, as a statistical fact, helps to reduce, not increase, the impoverishment of African American women and children). Thanks for keeping us straight on that one, CG.
In their defense, why do people who make racists comments need to tell themselves that “I’m not racists! I have no lots of minorities!”
That I am commenting on. With you everything Republican=racism. It’s the lens with which every posting you make is viewed by me because you cannot make any other point.
But there are plenty of racists out there. My problem is the raging ignorance and vulgar arrogance in the teabagger/republican party. It’s a bit disconcerting that anyone would humor let alone support some of the things the teabaggers say and do (i.e. call the President a muslim terrorist, or question his citizenship).
The best way to describe them wouldn’t be just racist but rather, crazy.
The fact that a recurring error is commented on does not mean that it is the only thing that is commented on (as, surely, even you realize it is not). That’s a nice trick, to take umbrage at being taken to task for something demonstrable, and then complaining that it is all you are ever taken to task for!
Well, just so you don’t feel abused, here are some of the other things I, and other progressives, take you to task for:
1) Expensive, militant, and often violent nationalistic chauvinism.
2) Confusion of “liberty” with mutual indifference, or even mutual belligerence.
3) A galling combination of economic illiteracy with a false pretense of economic sophistication.
4) A tendency toward theocratic and police-state assaults on our constitutionally protected liberties (while, of course, claiming to be the defenders of liberty, by virtue of your noble indifference to social injustice!)
I could go on, but I’m not trying to exhaustively enumerate your camp’s ideological defects, but rather only to reassure you that racism isn’t your only problem.
See? We can “make any other point”, after all.
To say that slavery is better than freedom is ignorant at any level. To say that living in squalor and being sold off is better than determining one’s life way is ignorant. To say that the master determines how to or if you have a family, or be his sex toy is ignorant. To say you know better than any black what is best is racist and ignorant.
Anyone who can say that slavery for anybody is better than life today is a racist, ignorant bigot.
Also, the so called statistics produced are as phony as anything ever produced by anti-women groups.
Not sure that’s what he said. He didn’t say slavery was better for anyone, he merely said that more children are being aborted than were affected under slavery.
Whether it’s a Dem or an R pro-lifer, that’s not a terribly surprising stance, is it?
First off, I’d love to see where he pulled the stat that HALF of all African American children are being aborted, other than out of his ass.
Second, these aren’t children. He is welcome to feel as passionate as he likes about abortion but to call an 8 week old fetus a child is just standard operating pro life BS. He’s seriously telling anyone that an 8 week old fetus suffered more than a child did under a system of slavery? Come on. How much money would you like to lose to me in a bet when we survey 1,000 African Americans and ask them point blank–do you believe the following:
This is obviously an issue that means a great deal to him–more power to him. But he doesn’t get to rewrite history, he doesn’t get to diminish the foulest, vilest system that ever infected this country, to make an anti-choice point.
I do love his sudden short term memory loss when it comes to Rush Limbaugh’s greatest hits of insults to folks such as Michael J. Fox.
I will give him credit for talking to Mike Stark’s production, including Dems. Most people avoid that guy like the plague so he gets marginal props for that.
It just seemed to me to be not an admission of racism, but a pretty standard pro-life response.
She seems to go 3 for 3 with this crowd of tinfoil hat teabaggers:
I’m glad these are real issues in the republican party and Jane Norton’s campaign. How very patriotic.