In heat of argument, a congressman’s racism shows
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On a day of opportunity for head scratching yesterday, few itches were as pronounced at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland as Iowa Rep. Steve King's ill-advised trip into history.
King spoke on MSNBC as part of a panel and when the question turned to the demographic makeup of convention delegates, he took Esquire writer Charles Pierce's bait.
“If you’re really optimistic, you can say this was the last time that old white people would command the Republican Party’s attention, its platform, its public face,” Pierce said.
That's when Rep. King unloaded.
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“This whole ‘old white people’ business does get a little tired, Charlie. I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you are talking about? Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”
It was a moment of high fury -- the kind where people have a habit of saying what they really mean.
And so MSNBC's moderator, Chris Hayes, took a break.
“I’m kind of shaken from that. Because that was just in-my-face racism,” reporter April Ryan, another panelist, said on Periscope after the fray.
King is the congressman who filed legislation to block the Treasury Department's plan to honor abolitionist Harriet Tubman by putting her image on the $20 bill.
For the record, Quartz indulged King by answering his question.
Fortunately for King and the party that's sought to distance itself from the white supremacists who've endorsed Donald Trump, most commentators at the convention are consumed instead today with a few lines Trump's wife's writers cribbed from Michelle Obama's previous convention speech.
Related: America and White Cultural Superiority: Representative Steve King (Huffington Post)
