Ever since Americans elected their first African-American president, the not-so-hidden racism on the right has steadily slithered its way into the open — enabled most recently by Donald Trump’s undisguised bigotry.
But Bill O’Reilly brought this trend to a new low on Tuesday with his deranged comments about Michelle Obama’s convention speech, in which she talked about living in a house, the White House, that was built by slaves.
O’Reilly, who presents himself as a historian, pretended to be praising and expanding on the first lady’s observation. “The history behind her remarks is fascinating,” he said on his Fox News program.
“Slaves that worked there were well fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government, which stopped hiring slave labor in 1802,” he said. “However, the feds did not forbid subcontractors from using slave labor.”
And so, O’Reilly continued, “Michelle Obama is essentially correct in citing slaves as builders of the White House, but there were others working, as well.”
She was not “essentially” right. She was completely right. I’m sure the fact that non-slaves also worked on the White House would come as a great relief to the descendants of those unfortunate humans whose tormenters forced them to help build the official residence of the president of the United States.
Let’s be clear, the federal government never “hired” slaves. It paid their enslaver for their work. And the fact that it did not forbid contractors from using slaves was a direct endorsement of slavery.
Worst of all, O’Reilly was mouthing classic racist propaganda when he waxed rhapsodic about the slaves having three hots and a cot.
It took me about five seconds on Google to find more examples of this argument than I can list here. In 2012, in fact, Salon published a non-exhaustive list of 10 racists who made the same claim, including Representative Jon Hubbard of Arkansas. Hubbard wrote in a 2009 book that the “slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise.”
Pat Buchanan, another bigot, who once ran for president , wrote:
“America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.”
And the list goes on. In his film “2016: Obama’s America,” the right winger Dinesh D’Souza actually argues that while Frederick Douglass exposed the indescribable evil of slavery, he did, after all, stay in America.
That’s a particularly twisted version of the “America, love it or leave it” argument of times past.
It is especially sickening to see this kind of filth on an American news network, even one as slanted as Fox News — whose on-air ideologues claim to champion individual liberties — on the eve of President Obama’s speech at the Philadelphia convention.
The network, which recently ousted its creater, Roger Ailes, because of sexual harassment allegations, owes the country an apology.
Slavery was a hideous crime committed against our fellow Americans. Black Americans were hunted, tortured, beaten and murdered by white Americans with impunity well into the second half of the 20th century.
There is no excusing or explaining away slavery, just as there is no excusing O’Reilly’s remarks. At the very least, he personally owes us all an apology.
Andrew Rosenthal is an Op-Ed columnist for The Times.
