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Reuters
Tom Cotton’s op-ed for the New York Times caused outrage
A senator from the state of Arkansas described slavery as a “necessary evil” on which the American nation was built.
In an interview in a local newspaper, Republican Tom Cotton said he rejected the idea that the United States was a systematically racist country at its core.
He is introducing legislation to ban federal funding for a New York Times project that aims to revise the historical view of slavery.
The founder of the project expressed his outrage at the comments.
This occurs amidst the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. The death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in Minnesota in May sparked large protests across the United States against police brutality and racism.
Protesters and police in the city of Portland, Oregon have clashed repeatedly in recent days. The fighting has escalated since a highly controversial decision by President Donald Trump to send federal police to the city. Under the United States Constitution, policing is a matter for individual states, not the federal government.
Senator Cotton has been a strong critic of the protests nationwide, describing them in an op-ed for the New York Times as an “orgy of violence” and endorsing Donald Trump’s threat to use troops to calm the unrest.
The article was widely criticized, and more than 800 Times employees signed a letter denouncing its publication, saying it contained misinformation.
The newspaper later apologized, saying the piece fell below its editorial standards. Opinion editor James Bennet resigned as a result.
What did Senator Cotton say?
Senator Cotton told the Arkansas Democratic Gazette: “We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we cannot understand our country.”
“As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, such as [Abraham] Lincoln said, to put slavery on the path to its maximum extinction. “
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On Thursday, Senator Cotton introduced the American History Savings Act, designed to stop funds by 1619, an initiative that bases the teaching of United States history around the first arrivals of slave ships in the United States. in August of that year.
The project won the Pulitzer Prize for comments for its founder, New York Times journalist Nicole Hannah-Jones, but has been criticized by many American conservatives, and Senator Cotton described it as “left-wing propaganda.”
“The whole premise of the historically flawed Project 1619 Project in the New York Times … is that the United States is at the root, a country that is systematically racist to the core and hopeless,” said Senator Cotton.
“I reject that root and branch. The United States is a great and noble country founded on the proposition that all humanity is created equal. We have always struggled to fulfill that promise, but no country has done more to achieve it.”
In response to Senator Cotton’s legislation, Hannah-Jones tweeted that if slavery was justified as a means to an end, anything else could be, too.
Senator Cotton responded, denying that he was justifying slavery and describing Hannah-Jones’ comments as “lies.”
