Global Courant 2023-04-13 06:03:34
Carlson leveled a racist rant against Tennessee lawmaker Justin Pearson on Wednesday, mocking his cadence while speaking
Following his (temporary) expulsion from the Tennessee House of Representatives, Black lawmaker Justin Pearson told reporters that one could not ignore the “racial dynamic” of Republicans’ efforts to remove him from office.
On Wednesday night, Tucker Carlson made those racial undertones explicit, mocking Pearson for his cadence when speaking, and suggesting that the representative spoke like a “sharecropper” in a racist attack against the Memphis lawmaker.
Carlson played a clip of a promotional video Pearson had filmed when running for student body president at Bowdoin College, accusing Pearson of cosplaying as a white person. “Justin Pearson wasn’t white — that’s probably how he got into Bowdoin in the first place — but he did a fantastic impression of it. That was the old Justin Pearson, before his ‘transition,’” Carlson said. The Fox host then played a clip taken last week of Pearson speaking to a Black congregation.
Tucker Carlson suggests Tennessee Rep. Justin Pearson speaks like a “sharecropper” when compared to Malcolm X who spoke “dignified standard English” pic.twitter.com/TDqHyBsI7h
— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) April 13, 2023
The Fox host mocked Pearson’s voice and accused him of “mimicking” historical Black figures. “He has changed quite dramatically as you can see, he transitioned from a crypto white kid into the modern incarnation of Martin Luther King Jr,” Carlson ranted.
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He continued, “You’ve got to ask yourself as long as we are mimicking civil rights leaders who died almost 60 years ago, why not some variety?” You never see politicians transition into Malcolm X, why is that? Maybe because Malcolm X didn’t talk like a sharecropper, he spoke dignified standard English.”
The Fox host has a long history of racism that predates his rise to Fox News primetime. Carlson once referred to Iraqis as “semi-literate primitive monkeys,” and accused immigrants of making the country “dirty.” Now, he has shifted to openly degrading Black lawmakers for not conforming to his interpretation of what a lawmaker should sound like.
