Once again, the Klan is ecstatic about Trump's choice to enforce federal laws that he was considered to be too racist to judge from the federal bench.
(CNN)Jeff Sessions, the first US senator to endorse Donald Trump, has been one of the President-elect's top supporters so it's no surprise that he is being considered as a potential Cabinet member.
But with the new attention on Sessions -- who has emerged as the top candidate to be the next attorney general, according to a transition official, setting up a potential Senate confirmation hearing -- old allegations of racism against the Alabama Republican are sure to haunt him.
It was 30 years ago that Sessions was denied a federal judgeship. At the time, he was a 39-year-old US attorney in Alabama.
The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony during hearings in March and May 1986, that Sessions had made racist remarks and called the NAACP and ACLU "un-American."
Thomas Figures, a black assistant US attorney who worked for Sessions, testified that Sessions called him "boy" on multiple occasions and joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying that he thought Klan members were "OK, until he learned that they smoked marijuana."
On why he never spoke up against Sessions' alleged use of the term, Figures testified: "I felt that if I had said anything or reacted in a manner in which I thought appropriate, I thought I would be fired."
Is this the underlying meaning of the slogan "Make America Great Again"? Must every shameful moment of America's past be resurrected? There is talk of internment camps, white and Christian supremacism. Climate change deniers and creationists are coming to the forefront.
ReplyDeleteAnd here I was content in my bubble teaching English to students large and small, with and without documentation. Was I misguided in celebrating the increasing diversity of our society and reveling in its richness? As I took pride in my minority status, I sought to respect the cultures in the salad bowl I call home.
Abigail Shure