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Dear Mitch McConnell: Black Americans are Americans Too
Yesterday, Mitch McConnell said what we already knew. He, like many other white Americans, believes that only white Americans are real Americans. I’ve written about this here before.
When asked by a reporter what his message was to people of color who were concerned they wouldn’t be able to vote in the midterms because of the failure of the Senate to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, he replied, “well the concern is misplaced because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting at just as high a percentage as Americans.”
In context of the question asked by the reporter, the problem is not that Mitch McConnell distinguished African Americans from white Americans. The problem is McConnell’s failure to preface Americans with “white,” since white Americans were who he was referring to when he said Americans.
When Mitch McConnell thinks of an American he only thinks of a person like himself: a white one.
This is a sensitive subject for African Americans. We’ve had to contend with…
