Bob CollinsOn a day of opportunity for head scratching yesterday, few itches were as pronounced at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland as Iowa Rep. Steve King’s ill-advised trip into history.
King spoke on MSNBC as part of a panel and when the question turned to the demographic makeup of convention delegates, he took Esquire writer Charles Pierce’s bait.
“If you’re really optimistic, you can say this was the last time that old white people would command the Republican Party’s attention, its platform, its public face,” Pierce said.
That’s when Rep. King unloaded.
“This whole ‘old white people’ business does get a little tired, Charlie. I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you are talking about? Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”
It was a moment of high fury — the kind where people have a habit of saying what they really mean.
And so MSNBC’s moderator, Chris Hayes, took a break.
2. The entire notion of debating which race/civilization/ "sub group" contributed most or is best is as odious as it is preposterous.
— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) July 18, 2016
3. Which is why I said "we're not debating this here." But I hear people who think I made the wrong call in the moment. Maybe I did.
— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) July 18, 2016
“I’m kind of shaken from that. Because that was just in-my-face racism,” reporter April Ryan, another panelist, said on Periscope after the fray.
King is the congressman who filed legislation to block the Treasury Department’s plan to honor abolitionist Harriet Tubman by putting her image on the $20 bill.
For the record, Quartz indulged King by answering his question.
numerals
mathematics
religion
Christianity
irrigation
novels
paper
ink
dance
music
gunpowder
guns
bombs
time bombs
the seismograph
the compass
just-in-time manufacturing
CD players
MP3 players
Pokemon
calculators
karaoke
lithium ion batteries
yoga
martial arts
silk
umbrellas
tea
noodles
instant noodles
shampoo
punk futurism
futures markets
Fortunately for King and the party that’s sought to distance itself from the white supremacists who’ve endorsed Donald Trump, most commentators at the convention are consumed instead today with a few lines Trump’s wife’s writers cribbed from Michelle Obama’s previous convention speech.
Related: America and White Cultural Superiority: Representative Steve King (Huffington Post)
