On Wednesday, a white man from Louisiana, Clay Higgins who was elected to Congress in 2017, posted on social media, for the world to see, an attack on Haitian migrants and citizens that was so vile and brazenly bigoted that everyone who reads it should be shocked and disgusted that anyone, especially and elected official, would write the words and display them purposefully and without concern for consequences.

This is what he said:

“Lol. These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the Western hemisphere, cults, splatstick gangsters… but damn if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP,” the Louisiana GOP representative tweeted in reference to charges filed by the Haitian Bridge Alliance against Donald Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance, who spread vicious and thoroughly debunked lies about Haitian migrants living in Springfield, Ohio.

He continued, “All these thugs better get their minds right and their ass out of our country before January 20.”

GOP Rep. Clay Higgins has now deleted this tweet after he was confronted by CBC Chair Steven Horsford on the House floor, and asked to take it down, multiple sources tell me & ⁦@heatherscope⁩ >> pic.twitter.com/10c8e5SZEP

— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) September 25, 2024

Even after deleting the tweet, Higgins doubled down on his racism in speaking with a CNN reporter:

“It’s all true. I can put up another controversial post tomorrow if you want me to. I mean, we do have freedom of speech. I’ll say what I want. It’s not a big deal to me. It’s like something stuck to the bottom of my boot. Just scrape it off and move on with my life.”

Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) defended Higgins, telling reporters:

“Look, he was approached on the floor by colleagues who said that was offensive. He said he went to the back, and he prayed about it and he regretted it, and he pulled the post down. I’m sure he probably regrets some of the language he used. But you know, we move forward. We believe in redemption around here.”

To be clear: the problem bigger than any one person’s hate

White people in America, in 2024, are far too comfortable with explicit racism for anyone to plausibly claim America is not a racist country. Sure, plenty of people, including white people, responded to Higgins’ tweet with immediate outrage and scorn. That’s why he deleted the tweet — but why was he so comfortable tweeting it in the first place?

After all, this wasn’t a tweet that would necessitate the stretching of one’s imagination in order to interpret it as racist. Higgins essentially called an entire racial and ethnic group, “uppity n****rs.” He characterized every person of Haitian descent in the world as primitive, nasty and prone to criminality. Then he said they were suddenly pretending to be “sophisticated” by filing charges via the American legal system. Again, this man was elected to office.

Vance, the man who spearheaded the cruel, sickening and dangerous rumors about an entire ethnic group, was also elected to office — and now he’s one tight presidential race away from serving in the second highest office in the nation.

Trump, the man who has and continues to run his entire campaign, as he did his one term as president: largely on fearmongering and hate speech against Black, Latino and Hispanic migrants.  He is one tight presidential race away from being elected again.

However things shake out in November, the overwhelming majority of white voters will cast their ballots for him just as they did in the last election and the election before that. (And I’ll never pass up a chance to remind you all that Trump specifically, purposefully and exclusively targeted voter districts that were largely Black and Latino in his election fraud propaganda campaign, which he presented and continues to present without providing a shred of evidence to substantiate it. The white majority will still vote for him again regardless.)

Here’s the thing

America is a racist country because it was founded in racism and hate and the blood of the Indigenous and the backs of the enslaved Africans. It’s a racist country because we can statistically track that it’s a racist country.  And because it was one of the last nations to end slavery. And then it followed the end of slavery with another century of legally sanctioned second-class citizenship for non-white people. But, really, neither a history lesson nor verifiable data are necessary to cite observable evidence that America is a racist country.

The existence of the propaganda-reliant conservative war on critical race theory, DEI, non-whitewashed Black history, and the ubiquitous thing white conservatives call “wokeness” indicates it’s a racist country. The legally sanctioned redistricting of congressional districts with the expressed intent to dilute Black voting power indicates it’s a racist country. The persistent Republican campaign to preserve the legacy of the Confederacy indicates it’s a racist country. The Great Replacement Theory indicates it’s a racist country. The constant dehumanizing of non-white migrants and the indifference to the turmoil it causes their communities indicates it’s a racist country. Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, the MAGA-fied GOP and all of their constituents consistently indicate it’s a racist country.

But if none of that is enough to convince you — there’s Clay Higgins. He’s the cherry on top of this white nationalist American pie. His brand of blatant, unambiguous and unmistakable bigotry and was expressed far too casually and confidently. His hate speech is far too commonplace; far too acceptable by the white majority; far too easy for elected leaders to treat like it’s not a big deal…

Far too American. 

See Also:

Exonerated Five Spotlights Donald Trump’s. History Of Anti-Black Racism On Convention’s Final Night

RNC Racism: Recapping All The Anti-Blackness At Republicans’ Convention In Milwaukee

 

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