Newly minted MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, a so-called expert on race and race relations, found a way to compare the confrontation between President Obama and Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to a well-known moment in segregation-era America. (via Newsbusters)
Harris-Perry, who often calls Republicans racist, said Jan Brewer was like Hazel Massery, a teenage white girl screaming racial epithets to Elizabeth Eckford, a black 15-year-old girl trying to enter an school that was itegrated soon after the Brown v. Broad of Education ruling. Transcript below.
MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: The fact is, when I see that still, I cannot help but to be reminded of the still photograph that was captured in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, of the young woman Hazel screaming at a young Elizabeth Eckford on her way trying to get into Little Rock High School, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. And the reason I bring up that image is because what we’ve come to know about Hazel in the years later is that as a young woman, Hazel, the young woman who was screaming at Elizabeth Eckford, was not herself sort of particularly, you know, full of racial animus or anything like that. But she was, she was caught up in this moment of racial anxiety, of making this point against these people who were coming in and trying to force their way into the school, and she sort of enjoyed the show or being able to yell at Elizabeth Eckford in this moment. But that image captured all of the ugliness, all of the nastiness of the larger political milieu, and I feel that this picture does as well
Send To A Friend
Share