MSNBC’s Eddie Glaude Suggests Lindsey Graham Representing the Wrong Side of Lynching
Princeton University professor Eddie Glaude responded to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) claims that President Donald Trump is being lynched on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Wednesday, by questioning “which side of the lynching” Graham is on, referencing the senator’s state of South Carolina and its history of lynching.
Jason Johnson, a professor, MSNBC contributor, and politics editor at The Root, opened the segment by claiming that the American people should “contextualize the president’s behavior.”
“I’ll give you a clear example, it was just less than a month… two months ago that a bipartisan group of Congress, right, four Republicans and the rest of the Democratic Party, all voted to say that this president was a racist,” he continued. “And so if Congress, if an entire house of Congress has said this president does not view all men and all women equally, this president has racial animus towards particular groups of people, any and everything he does should be viewed in that context, and that’s how we don’t allow him to distract us. But I also think it’s important as a journalism professor, as an American citizen, that we always are careful with our language.”
“It’s not just the conversations about the president’s a racist, the president’s a liar, but even our fast and loose terms about violence, right? It’s when someone says, ‘Oh, I was raped by the IRS’ or ‘I was crucified by that exam,’ we use violent terms to describe what are inconveniences in life, and in that same way we sort of degrade the amount of violence and death that occurs in this country,” Johnson explained. “So whether it’s lynching or rape or crucifixion these are all terms which should be used to describe those specific acts. not as metaphor for political or personal or financial inconvenience.”
Morning Joe co-anchor Willie Geist then brought up Graham’s defense of Trump using the term “lynching,” declaring, “Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said this is a lynching in every sense. In other words, it’s not just the metaphor, he said this is a lynching in every sense. You don’t have to be from South Carolina to understand the history, but it certainly is more front and center than in some other places,” which led Glaude to respond, “I wonder which side of the lynching is he talking about?”
“That’s what I’m thinking about, since he’s from South Carolina. Who was doing what and who was receiving what?” asked Glaude, adding, “And look, in the context of this, just a few days ago, the state of Mississippi had to put up a bullet-proof memorial of Emmett Till, who was lynched because the memorial in Glendora, Mississippi was being shot up every day. John Cheney’s memorial, constantly, gravesite constantly defamed, constantly attacked, graffitied and the like.”
“Our country is profoundly sick when it comes to the issue of race. And when we see politicians, whether deliberately or not, invoking that history for political ends and political purposes, it deepens our illness. It fundamentally deepens our sickness,” he proclaimed. “So we need to dismiss it. We need to decry it. We need to denounce it, and understand Donald Trump for who he is.”
Glaude concluded, “I am sick and tired of the country playing fast and loose with our dead. We have to do more. And so I invite everybody to go down to Montgomery and visit the lynching memorial to see what we have done.”
Watch above via MSNBC.
