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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

This is an excellent example of the theme I've been pounding on for weeks.

Meadows brings a black woman who worked for Trump in as evidence that Trump is not racist. Tlaib points out that it is racist and offensive to use her as a prop. Meadows' musters all of his white fragility and manages to flip the whole thing back so that everyone involved has to reassure him that he is not racist. He fucking trades on his friendship with Cummings as well as using his family members of color* to defend himself and assuage his feelings. He manages to get Tlaib to retract and insist that she wasn't calling him a racist. This is what it is like to confront almost every white person with their racism. Every single program on race I have ever been involved in is crafted to take this into account. Because once it happens, we can no longer talk about the underlying racist action. We spend every single moment comforting the person who made the statement.

And Meadows, on a number of occasions, pushed the Obama birther bullshit and stated publicly that we should send him back to Kenya. He's a fucking racist. And the fact that he doesn't think he's a racist is exactly what I'm talking about.

TM

*See: White Fragility, Dr. Robin DiAngelo

You are right about all of this, but I wish Tlaib and other Democrats had used the hearing to ask questions of Cohen that would elicit useful information, rather than trying to sympathize with him, make their own points about various issues, or otherwise grandstand. (I put Tlaib in the second category.) AOC did it well. Too many other Democrats were more interested in saying something than asking Cohen questions. Or, what Ken White said.