On the Monday, April 28, The Ed Show, MSNBC host Ed Schultz devoted the first segment of nearly 15 minutes of his show to trying to link prominent conservatives like Paul Ryan to the racist views of people like Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling, whom the MSNBC host failed to label as a Democratic donor.
Schultz charged that Ryan and other GOPers "support policies that attack minorities" and later reiterated that conservatives "fuel racism by their policies that attack minorities." [See video below.]
MSNBC political analysts Goldie Taylor and Michael Eric Dyson joined Schultz, with Taylor accusing Republicans of pushing "economic apartheid" against minorities, and Dyson claiming that conservative figures like Ryan, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck say things that "unleash the bigotry and vile racism" that "can be easily tapped."
Below is a transcript of relevant portions of the Monday, April 28, The Ed Show on MSNBC:
ED SCHULTZ: Paul Ryan can try and whitewash his comments all he wants, but he can't whitewash his budget or his policies. You see, his budget and voting record, they're very clear. He supports policies that attack minorities.
(...)
Overall, Republican policies are targeted to hurt minority Americans. Paul Ryan's budget hurts. Their actions hurt. And they are emboldened by conversations that we have been exposed to over the weekend by people who are the power brokers. The Ryan budget, very clear who he wants to hurt.
(Schultz lists a number of Republican agenda items suggesting that minorities are hurt by them.)
You see, radical talk in this country, if it goes unchallenged, leads to radical policies like this. I do believe that the conservatives in this country continue to fuel racism by their policies that attack minorities in this country and try to keep the working folk down. It emboldens people who are in power to say what they say with absolutely no responsibility whatsoever. Kids are watching. They're listening. What kind of example are we setting?
(...)
I just think this constant negativity and attacking of the President of the United States has emboldened a lot of people in this country to have at it with absolutely no repercussion whatsoever. Goldie, your thoughts about Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling? Are they just the tip of the iceberg? How deep does it run in society?
(...)
GOLDIE TAYLOR: Unfortunately, though, you know, while bigotry and having those kinds of beliefs happens to be a legal thing, when you put that into action, when you enact it into policy, when you impact people's lives based on those very divisive social constructs you created by your own fears, that's when people's lives begin to become, you know, diminished and impacted in a negative way. We saw it in Jim Crow, but I will tell you, Jim Crow was about more than a physical separateness, it was about economic apartheid-
SCHULTZ: Yeah.
TAYLOR: -keeping our stuff away from them. And that's what Ryan's policies are about. It's about a brand new brand of economic apartheid, about keeping our stuff away from them. "Them" happens to be "us."
SCHULTZ: I think that Ryan's budget -- and you see the numbers right there -- come from a thought process that has been put on the American people in the last week. I mean, if these guys were putting a budget, this is what it would look like. How else can you read it when you attack the very issue people need to turn people's lives around? They don't want to pay the taxes. They don't want the responsibilities. They don't want government involved at all. And so they pick targets. And their targets are the weakest politically. And I think the attack on the President constantly, not even recognizing he was elected, reelected, the authenticity of his birth, this all adds up to embolden a lot of people of power and money to use their platform and to be exposed. This is a side of America that is ugly. How do we turn this around?
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: Yeah, you're speaking to something that's very serious here, and people don't often get the relationship between the two. On the one hand, we've got infrastructure of intelligencia who continue to articulate values, visions, and understandings of life that reinforce the every day, the common sense that passes for learning and understanding race in America. So when you have the Rush Limbaughs, when you have the Glenn Becks, when you have the radio show hosts to the right, when you have Paul Ryan, when you have people who are ideologues on the right constantly lambasting the legitimacy of the presidency, especially Barack Obama's presidency,
SCHULTZ: It permeates throughout society. It permeates through the society. It emboldens people to say anything they want about race.
DYSON: Well, sure. It unleashes the bigotry and vile racism that is at the tap, that can be easily tapped, so the assault on Obama, and if Obama is Harvard-educated, Ivy League degreed and a man of obvious sophistication with a cosmopolitan outlook, if he is subjected to this kind of vicious assault, then the ordinary human being, the National Basketball Association, is subjected to the same kind of criminal and lethal bigotry that a Donald Sterling would unleash, but it's across the board, it's pervasive. That's the intellectual infrastructure that reinforces the bigotry at the level of the budget, at the level of common discourse in America, which is why we are in such a racial miasma and incapable of finding our way through it unless we're telling the truth about it.
