How Mitch McConnell -- and all White people -- benefit from White supremacy at the expense of our

[TexasTowelie]

How Mitch McConnell — and all White people — benefit from White supremacy at the expense of our Black neighbors


"I don't think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters last week, as House Democrats prepared the first-ever hearing on the subject. (Detroit Rep. Rashida Tlaib was a co-sponsor of H.R.40: The Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.) "We've tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We elected an African American president," McConnell said.

Ignore how much work the word we is doing in that sentence — as if McConnell hadn't spent his career fighting civil rights and literally breaking the Senate to weaken Barack Obama. Ignore, too, at least for now, the question of how reparations would work.

Instead, focus on the most important phrase in the quote, the one conservatives have been using to shift blame away from institutions to individuals who have long since been worm food: "for whom none of us currently living are responsible."

It would take more space than I have to demonstrate all the ways in which this statement is profoundly ahistorical and intentionally misleading. But let's start with the basics: Freed slaves were promised 40 acres and a mule; they didn't get it. During Reconstruction, they were promised political power; White supremacists stole that, then violently subjugated them under under Jim Crow. African Americans were denied access to jobs and economic and educational opportunities; Black children were segregated into dilapidated schools. During the New Deal and in the postwar era, the federal government actively prevented African Americans from obtaining mortgages, effectively blocking them from building equity and passing along generational wealth to their descendants.

Read more: https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/how-mitch-mcconnell-and-every-other-white-person-has-benefited-from-white-supremacy-at-the-expense-of-our-black-neighbors/Content?oid=21981457

[RHMerriman]

1. Sins of the fathers?

Sins of the fathers?

Okay. Good plan.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. K&R

[guillaumeb]

3. Recommended.

McConnell has built his career on appeasing racists, and calling out to racists. He has also built his career on financially benefitting from his insider position, as has his wife.

[wasupaloopa]

4. Where is the part where I benefit from White

Supremacy?

I have never supported White Supremacy in my entire 73 years.

But I am sure someone will show me where I am ignorant of the facts

[angstlessk]

6. Try being black for a year,

then you will have your answer.

[sheshe2]

5. Fact.

White supremacy has never left. And until we fully reckon with it, it never will.