On the Thursday, April 24, All In with Chris Hayes, during a discussion of racist comments about black Americans by Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, MSNBC political analyst Michael Eric Dyson compared those words to a recent statement by Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan about the work ethic in the inner cities. [See video below.]
Dyson opined:
And I don't see -- I'm not calling him a racist -- but I don't see a great deal of difference between Paul Ryan's comments about lazy inner city people who really just don't want to work, and this guy suggesting that they abort their babies, and that they somehow instead of picking cotton and slavery, are being subsidized by the government.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of Dyson's comments from the Thursday, April 24, All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC:
And you know what strikes me, Chris? This man is 67 years old. We didn't say 97. We didn't even say 77. We said 67. Imagine all the 67 to 70-year-olds out there exercising authority over the lives of people of color, even over poor white people, who have the same pernicious beliefs about African-American, about Latino and other poor people. This is one of the most, I think, ridiculous revelations about the soft underbelly of racism and the hard, if you will, surface of bigotry that coexist.
And I don't see -- I'm not calling him a racist -- but I don't see a great deal of difference between Paul Ryan's comments about lazy inner city people who really just don't want to work, and this guy suggesting that they abort their babies, and that they somehow instead of picking cotton and slavery, are being subsidized by the government.
There is a continuum of racialized beliefs that has to at least acknowledge the connection between, on the one hand, the arguments about race that are implicit and the arguments about race on the other hand that are quite explicit.
