REID: “But here it is, Sen. Josh Hawley, sort of one of the worst sort of offenders here, slamming you by name.”
[Clip starts]
COTTON: “Dr. Ibram Kendi wrote this. ‘The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.’ That’s right, that’s what he said. Think about that for a moment. He’s saying that he’s opposed to equality under the law. Dr. Kendi and his followers are in no uncertain terms advocating for state-sanctioned racism.”
[Clip ends]
REID: “Okay, now, given the fact that they can’t seem to quote Dr. King accurately, I’m just going to assume that they’re misquoting you or giving the wrong context. Can you explain what that quote, even if it’s an accurate quote, what it means?”
KENDI: “Sure. So, Joy, we recognized as a nation that elderly people were dying at the highest rates, were the most vulnerable to Covid-19. So we decided that it was best to provide vaccine to those people first. No one described that as a bad policy. But young people could have said, ‘Hey, you’re discriminating against us.’ And we would have responded, ‘Well, older people are dying at the highest rates. Should they not receive vaccine first?’ But if we would have then started thinking about, ‘Oh, black people are also dying at the highest rates from Covid-19. You know, maybe they should also receive — maybe they should also receive vaccine first, maybe we should have a system in which those who have the — those who have the greatest needs are provided with what they need,’ but they call that reverse discrimination. They call that discrimination. They’re against that. How are we going to create equity and justice for all if we’re providing the same resources to middle-income people as we’re providing to billionaires?”
REID: “Yeah. This is the same theory under which they have gone after black farmers receiving benefits when they have only 14% of the land at this point. They have been stripped of their land. But then they’re saying that white farmers need to get all the rest, all the benefits need to go to white farmers or it’s reverse discrimination. They’re doing that in courts, Stephen Miller is part of that.”