CNN’s Bakari Sellers Claims the ‘Only Difference’ Between USA in 1896 and 2026 Is Klan Hoods Being ‘Swapped’ for Brooks Brothers Suits

CNN political commentator Bakari Sellers claimed the “only difference” between the United States in 1896 and 2026 is that white supremacists have “swapped” their Ku Klux Klan hoods for Brooks Brothers suits.

Sellers made the comment during an appearance on CNN Newsnight on Monday.

Host Abby Phillip had just brought up several Republican redistricting victories, pointing to Louisiana, where the Supreme Court recently ruled racial gerrymandering violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and Alabama, where she said the state is “planning to toss out” its map for one that “favors Republicans [and] eliminates a Black district.”

“We’re going beyond new maps here, we’re tinkering with the calendar, people are voting, maybe those votes get thrown out. It’s chaos,” Phillip said.

Sellers agreed it was “chaos,” then said he wanted to take a “50,000 foot view” of the country. And what he sees is America looking just like the Jim Crow South of the late 19th Century.

“I think for Black millennials, the progress that our parents and grandparents gave us that we’re watching being ripped away from us is something that our generation is going to have to really wrestle with, and figuring out how we get out of this conundrum,” Sellers said.

He continued, “If somebody fell asleep in 1896 and woke up today in 2026, they would simply say the only difference is now Negroes have a TV show and we wear nice suits. They swapped out Klan hoods for Brooks Brothers suits. And that is the problem.”

Sellers went on to say he’s hearing a lot of “casual laughter” from right-wingers about the redistricting victories. But he said that was only showing their “true colors” — that they were comfortable with Black Americans in the South “being silenced.”

That was one of two moments from Sellers that went fairly viral from Monday night’s show. Sellers also told Kevin O’Leary “don’t be a d*ck” after Sellers lectured him about the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case. He said O’Leary needed to “understand” that there were Black Americans who “fought, died, and bled for the right to vote.”

Watch above via CNN.

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