MSNBC’s Touré Tells Romney What He ‘Needs To Tell Black America’

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will speak at the NAACP’s National Convention Wednesday, and MSNBC’s Touré said Romney needs to use the opportunity to talk about unemployment and education among blacks, as well as a ban on blacks receiving the priesthood in his church until 1978.

Touré cited the unemployment rate among blacks, as well as the education gap. “Does he have a plan to narrow the education gap between the races that he called the civil rights issue of our time?” he asked.

Touré said Romney needs to talk about his feelings on blacks not being able to hold the priesthood in Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints until he was 31, and said Romney should say whether he wanted the policy changed or just accepted it when it was changed.

Romney’s father, George Romney, who marched with civil rights leaders in 1963, once said the discrimination Mormons faced made him more sensitive to the harm discrimination causes.

“I speak as a member of a minority group that knows the longtime harmful effect of persecution and discrimination,” George Romney said.

Steve Kornacki added in that that one thing Romney shouldn’t say is “you people,” referencing Ross Perot‘s 1992 use of the phrase when talking about how bad the economy was.

Watch the video below, via MSNBC:

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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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