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Don’t Worry, Everyone. Fox News’ Brit Hume Is Here to Tell Us What Is & Isn’t Racist.

By Jul 15th, 2019, 4:10 pm
Brit Hume ranting about racism on Fox News.

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Over the weekend, Donald Trump sent out a series of tweets attacking a number of Democratic lawmakers, all women of color. He doesn’t name them but it’s very clear he’s referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley (or some number of those freshman Congresswomen). In the tweets, he says that these women “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world.” He parrots Tucker Carlson’s frequent message that they have no right to complain about conditions in America and that instead, they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Of those four lawmakers, the only one who was born outside of the U.S. is Rep. Omar (she left Somalia as a refugee as a child). But “go back where you came from” is an insult slung by racists with little interest in accuracy. And Trump’s words were clearly racist. That seems impossible to deny, although, predictably, some are still trying. Most GOP lawmakers have remained silent on the issue, while major media outlets are as scared of the word as ever.

Fox News analyst Brit Hume tried to claim that Trump’s tweets didn’t fit the dictionary definition of racism.

That is, obviously, an idiotic thing to say. For one thing, he’s being awfully selective with his choice of definitions there.

Even the dictionary is out here essentially telling Brit Hume to remember that context and nuance exist.

Brit Hume has a long history of making himself the arbiter of what is and isn’t racist. Some of the things he’s declared decidedly not racist include birtherism, Trump calling Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas,” and Steve King as a person. He criticized then-President Obama for thinking that “racism in America has a white face, never a black face” (i.e. not talking enough about “reverse racism,” which isn’t a thing).

Hume has claimed on-air that people only pretend to be upset over racism because, as he sees it, “America is a compassionate country” and that we all want to be considerate of each other’s feelings, so “therefore if you’re a victim in any of these areas it’s kind of a good deal.” His claim that the word “racism” is overused isn’t new; he’s previously said that the word has been weaponized for political purposes and implied that since the Civil Rights movement happened there is an “overwhelming national consensus against racism,” ergo, presumably, nothing is racist anymore.

In other words, no one gives a crap what Brit Hume has to say about racism.

Meanwhile, Trump has not only refused to apologize for his racist comments, but he’s tripled down and repeated them both on Twitter and to reporters.

(image: screencap)

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Author
Vivian Kane
Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.
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