Following his shocking comments about Americans opposed to mandating Critical Race Theory be taught in schools, CNN’s Don Lemon suggested, in an interview with The Washington Post, that Americans do not believe black people are “fully human” and that American “deserved” President Donald Trump in order to come to terms with the country’s systemic racism.
“We’re living in two different realities as Black and White people,” Lemon’s interview began.
From there, the host launched into a diatribe on race relations and claimed that Trump prompted his overall commitment to exposing “systemic racism.”
“It was a wake-up call to White people who thought we were living in a nonracist world,” Lemon said of Trump’s election. “We’re living in two different realities as Black and White people. We knew, as Black people, what was lurking beneath the surface. I still believe that he was the necessary wake-up for America to realize just how racist it is.”
He then said that he believes it is his job — and the job of all black Americans — to educate white peoples on issues of race.
“Unfortunately to some degree you have to do it, because otherwise they may take the wrong actions, and we want people to do it the right way. And the right way is by understanding and seeing our humanity,” Lemon said of his calling to “guide white people through racism.”
“These are conversations that I want to have with people I know,” he added. “You can have conversations with people you don’t know, but it’s not the same conversation. I think that is where we’re going to make a difference.”
Lemon then got to the heart of the matter: America is a racist country.
“I feel like I’ve had to do that because I don’t think America has seen enough people like me,” Lemon told the Post. “I don’t think America intimately knows enough people like me. I would love America to see Black people, especially Black gay men as — and I hate this word — normal, and as human beings and as part of the culture. That we have our vulnerabilities and our struggles, but we also have our successes. We love, we hurt, and we go through trials and tribulations just like anyone else.
“I don’t know if America sees Black people and especially Black gay men as fully human, and as deserving of the American Dream,” he said, pointedly.
Lemon, of course, is promoting his own book on the matter — a memoir of sorts, designed to relate his experiences with racism so that his readers may better understand how to address the issue.
Lemon has been outspoken on the issue of race in light of George Floyd’s death and the ongoing anti-police brutality and anti-racism movements, but, most recently, the anchor chastised parents, students, and education activists for opposing CRT, telling them that the issue was “not about you.”
“If you are the person who happens to be telling the history, you’re going to tell it in your favor, he told fellow CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. “And the best way to correct that, so that some people aren’t over-indexed in the history of the country, is to have all voices, as many voices as possible, included in that history.”
As The Daily Wire noted, Lemon mischaracterized CRT as the only alternative to edited history, rather than one of many alternatives.