Are you a Christian? Are you pro-life? Do you have think books in school libraries should be age appropriate? If the answer is yes, MSNBC’s Joy Reid used her Tuesday show to compare you to slave traders.
During a segment entitled “the origins of white supremacy,” Reid also gave a family history lesson, “Among those who did survive was my own maternal ancestor, a Fulani Muslim woman named Yhara Waboosia, later a converted Christian renamed Mitchie Johnson. She was born in 1800 in Ghana and as a six or seven-year-old was incarcerated in one of those slave castles in Ghana and shipped to present day Guyana with her mom. She actually lived to be 106 years old. She died in 1906, 23 years before my own mother was born.”
Operating under the false assumption that this story would be illegal to teach in school, Reid continued, “This stuff is not ancient history, y'all. And history is fascinating, right? Americans should consider making it legal to teach in schools here.”
Trying to tie the story to modern day, Reid added:
When you look at the sometimes violent history of organized religion from the slave trade to the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials to the religion-based conflicts and conquests in places like Israel-Palestine or the emergence, again, per Robbie Jones, of right-wing Christianity-based white supremacy, here in the U.S., it should not surprise you that the base of support for far-right policies on banning books and distorting history, on abortion, on LGBTQ issues, even support for cults like QAnon and the cult of personality around Donald Trump, are grounded in religious extremism.
There is a lot to unpack there, it can hard to know where to begin. Is Reid comparing Israel’s existence with the slave trade, Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Salem Witch Trials? It is progressives like Reid who dehumanize people in the abortion debate under the guise of “choice” and convenience. Nobody is “banning books,” but if a book is too much for the U.S. Senate then it shouldn’t be available to elementary schools. Nor is anybody banning history on the slave trade and Reid has her own history “on LGBTQ issues” and believing boys are boys and girls are girls is not akin to buying and selling people.
This segment was sponsored by Liberty Mutual.
Here is a transcript for the September 12 show:
MSNBC The ReidOut
9/12/2023
7:42 PM ET
JOY REID: Among those who did survive was my own maternal ancestor, a Fulani Muslim woman named Yhara Waboosia, later a converted Christian renamed Mitchie Johnson. She was born in 1800 in Ghana and as a six or seven-year-old was incarcerated in one of those slave castles in Ghana and shipped to present day Guyana with her mom. She actually lived to be 106 years old. She died in 1906, 23 years before my own mother was born.
This stuff is not ancient history, y'all. And history is fascinating, right? Americans should consider making it legal to teach in schools here.
And the last thing I will add is when you look at the sometimes violent history of organized religion from the slave trade to the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials to the religion-based conflicts and conquests in places like Israel-Palestine or the emergence, again, per Robbie Jones, of right-wing Christianity-based white supremacy, here in the U.S., it should not surprise you that the base of support for far-right policies on banning books and distorting history, on abortion, on LGBTQ issues, even support for cults like QAnon and the cult of personality around Donald Trump, are grounded in religious extremism.
I'm not saying religion is always bad. Sometimes it does beautiful things, but organized religion has, shall we say, a colorfully mixed history and right now, religious extremism mixed with white nationalism and that Trump cult of personality are straining our society and our democracy to the breaking point.
