WASHINGTON (Reuters) – United States Republican Senator Tom Cotton described slavery as “a necessary evil” in an attack published in a New York Times initiative to make slavery the focal point of American history for women. American schools.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee nomination hearing for Representative John Ratcliffe (R-TX), on Capitol Hill in Washington, USA, 5 of May 2020. Andrew Harnik / Pool via REUTERS
“As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery in the course of its final extinction,” Cotton said in an interview. with the Arkansas Democratic Gazette published Sunday.
Cotton, seen as a possible presidential candidate for 2024, made the comment in describing the legislation he intends to introduce Thursday that would withhold federal tax money from an elementary and secondary curriculum promoted by the New York Times Project 1619.
Project 1619, launched last year to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the arrival of African slaves on the shores of the United States, would place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of African-Americans at the center of United States history.
“We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact in the development of our country because otherwise we cannot understand our country,” Cotton told the Democratic Gazette.
But he maintained that the draft of 1619 describes the United States as “at the root, a country that is systematically racist to the core and unredeemable. I reject that root and branch.
The Arkansas Republican later dismissed the news coverage that described slavery as a necessary evil.
“This is the definition of fake news,” Cotton wrote on Twitter. “I said that * the Founders saw slavery as a necessary evil *”.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who launched Project 1619, disputed Cotton’s claim with her own tweet: “You said, quote:” As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil on which the union was built. . ‘That’ as ‘denotes agreement’.
The New York Times was criticized earlier this year for publishing a Cotton column urging the federal government to use the military to quell street protests over police violence and racial injustice that led to the opinion editor’s resignation.
Report by David Morgan; Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis Edition
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