The Influence of John Lewis (conclusion added)

Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Hardball on Monday that President Donald Trump ‘feels at home with’ recent acts of racist violence, citing Trump’s comments on the Charlottesville riots in 2017 as proof.”

Now, Lewis’ opinion on Trump is wrong, and you will find that it’s wrong if you take the 3 minutes to watch the video of Trump’s remarks.

If Lewis knew that I tolerated Trump and defended his remarks, he’d label me racist too. If I said “I like black people”, I think Lewis would still label me as racist. If I said, “I love black people”, I think Lewis would still say I’m racist. I think he’d label me racist almost no matter what credentials I might show him that I’m not. After all, in 1963 when I was 22 years old, I didn’t get on a bus and head to Alabama. In 2019, I wrote a blog disparaging reparations. I must be a racist.

What’s going on with Lewis is partisan politics, pure and simple. Lewis has political power. He’s a living connection to the civil rights movement. John Lewis was a giant in the movement. If there were a black Mt. Rushmore, he’d be a strong candidate. He sways votes. His support and endorsement matter. Lewis didn’t accept Bernie Sanders’ civil rights credentials in 2016. He made a point of saying that he didn’t see Sanders participating in the civil rights movement in the 60s. His endorsement of Hillary made a big difference for her in South Carolina. Lewis said “But I met Hillary Clinton. I met President (Bill) Clinton.”

In 2008, Lewis supported Obama, not Clinton. This too made a big difference.

Lewis stands for Trump’s impeachment. He has said “I don’t think he’s legitimate. I said it back at the end of the election. I still believe that today.”

Lewis in this interview calls Trump a racist. “We have someone, the head of our government, who, in the finality, is a racist. He doesn’t understand the meaning of your [Dr. King’s] life and the significance of the civil-rights movement.” Also: “We need a president, a leader of the national government, who’s not a racist. Trump is a racist.”

“The president’s policies are an insult to the people portrayed in the [civil rights] museum,” Lewis said.

Lewis has boycotted Trump. He didn’t attend the inauguration or State of the Union address.

Lewis is now keeping racism alive by emphasizing race and racism in his politics. His politics and his ideas of how government power and taxes should be used are based on race. He thinks of it as justice, even radical justice, but can racial politics be just? Maybe a sliver of it, but not most of it.

If racial politics has any hope of ever being just, it won’t be by labeling Trump and his supporters, including people of many races, as racists.

More to the libertarian point, which is to reduce the importance of power and politics, the latter aim is aided by reducing the issue of racism to a much lower dimension and intensity, because racism is one of the focal points of power politics. Power needs seed points around which to crystallize and become acceptable, so as to gain legitimacy among the broad public. Getting rid of racism is one of those seeds, and it is deemed acceptable to rally people and pass laws to mitigate racism. It’s deemed acceptable and found politically useful to inject racism into campaigns and criticize opponents according to their purported views on race. But most all of the emphasis on race is a hustle. It’s mainly a ruse. America does not have a big race problem anymore. John Lewis is in Congress. The White House had Obama in power for years. There are no political obstacles based upon race itself. The obstacles are elsewhere to the advancement of people of particular races. If children in minority areas have relatively deficient education, the causes do not emanate from the White House or from an inability of minority people to win local, state and federal elections.

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8:32 am on May 28, 2019