Rep. Steve King: Obama Favors The “Black Person” By Default
King: When you look at this administration, I’m offended by Eric Holder and the President also, their posture. It looks like Eric Holder said that white people in America are cowards when it comes to race. And I don’t know what the basis of that is but I’m not a coward when it comes to that and I’m happy to talk about these things and I think we should. But the President has demonstrated that he has a default mechanism in him that breaks down the side of race — on the side that favors the black person.
King misquoted Holder, who did not single out any specific group during a Justice Department event last February:
“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.”
Moreover, conservatives are wholly obsessed with the idea that Obama — not the racist-sign-wielding nativists who swarm to Tea Party gatherings — has a race problem. The president’s supposed bias, to which King has alluded several times, apparently makes him unable to look objectively at issues. His loyalty, according to King, is not to all Americans but to a specific ethnic community. Last month, for example, King asked, “When [Obama] had an Irish cop and a black professor, who did he side with?”
With no legislative achievements to his name, King appears to have decided that appealing to the right-wing fringe is his ticket to political survival. His career in Congress is defined by incendiary, distasteful, often ridiculous comments such as the one he made this morning.