Donald Trump’s administration may be a complete disaster but his administration has one thing down pat—racism. Yesterday, civil rights leaders met with Attorney General Jeff Sessions to ask him not to move forward with an investigation based on Donald Trump’s wildly insane accusations that 3 to 5 million people voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election—for Hillary Clinton, of course. Leaders from the NAACP, the National Urban League, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, National Action Network, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Black Women’s Roundtable were all present.
"I asked him to counsel the president against the creation of such a task force and a commission because that commission will be seen to intimidate our communities," said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. "In the absence of any evidence of voter fraud, he should be counseling the president away from such a course....We don’t need an investigation into something that doesn't exist. We should not be crediting the fantasies of this president at the cost of African Americans and Latinos feeling secure that they’re not being intimidated from voting and participating in the process."
It’s a well-proven fact that voter fraud is virtually nonexistent. In fact, if Trump and Sessions really want to look into voter fraud, they need look no further than the first family and the cabinet since it turns out that Tiffany Trump, Jared Kushner, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and Sean Spicer are all registered to vote in two states. But what’s the fun in going after people you know, who actually have incentive to commit voter fraud, when you can blame millions of people of color instead?
Voting wasn’t the only issue the leaders discussed in their time with Sessions. Other topics brought up were police abuse, transgender rights and Trump’s Executive Orders on travel (aka the Muslim bans). Additionally, leaders urged Sessions to publicly condemn hate crimes and the wave of anti-Semitic acts across the country.
"We need his voice to speak out when we see what’s going on in the Jewish cemeteries, with the bomb threats, with the targeting of Muslims, the targeting of people because of sexual orientation. He needs to be the voice against hate and he needs to prosecute those who are engaged in this activity," [Al Sharpton said].
Of course, ol’ Jeff didn’t have much to say although he supposedly listened intently. And while his spokesperson declined to comment on the meeting, Sherrilyn Ifill from the NAACP said that he was “noncommittal.” And then he left her with this gem:
Sigh. Could we have just one day when a member of the Trump administration doesn’t do something stupid and racist? Calling a black person “articulate” is one of those racial microagressions that is so common and so old that it elicits an eye roll every time we hear it.
Of course, at surface value it sounds like a compliment. But the underlying meaning communicates a hostile, negative slight directed at its recipient. It implies that the expectation is that she wouldn’t be articulate and well-spoken. Ifill has degrees from Vassar and New York University School of Law. She taught at the University of Maryland School of Law for two decades. She is an author and accomplished litigator. She likely would not have been included in a meeting with the attorney general if she hadn’t had extensive credentials to speak on the law and civil rights. Is it really a surprise that she is articulate? Not to us, of course. But to Jeff Sessions, another bumbling idiot in this administration, who still believes that he is living in George Wallace’s “segregation now, segregation forever” Alabama, a black woman who can put together coherent sentences is probably quite a shock.
Then again, perhaps it really was a compliment. Since we know that nearly everyone in the Trump administration is the exact opposite of articulate, maybe he really was impressed. We can’t really know what Sessions was thinking when he said it. But we do know that this administration can’t seem to go a day without showing its racism.