What is there to say about Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton? For starters, he’s racist. He’s said some of the most outrageous statements of 2020. He gave some of the worst commentary on nationwide protests – before moving on to defending the indefensible.
As Black people rose up throughout the nation against police brutality and state violence, he called for the military to attack protesters! He said they should offer “no quarter,” which means they should KILL those he labeled “insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters.” He didn’t stop there.
Cotton has also rejected the New York Times’ 1619 Project curriculum, which would educate kids about slavery – by calling slavery a “neccessary evil!” He said 1619 was “racially divisive” and “denies the noble principles of freedom and equality on which our nation was founded.”
The truth: the USA was founded on slavery, genocide, and conquest. What Cotton and other bigoted conservatives want is to hide the links between American history and what’s happening now. Slavery is directly linked to what’s happening now!
The legal system in the United States was shaped by racist laws like the Black Codes and Jim Crow. Police are descended from slave catchers and prisons have been used to re-enslave Black people thanks to the 13th Amendment. None of this has ever been necessary – it’s just evil!