Over six years ago on MSNBC, a black professor at Georgetown University argued “more white kids need to die for Americans to understand racism.” Michael Eric Dyson, speaking after the George Zimmerman verdict, said, “White Americans and others will feel that this was a justifiable verdict, this is how things happen. Not until, and unless, the number of white kids die that approximate the numbers of black and other kids who die, will America see.”

Well, six years later, another black guest on MSNBC argued for whites to be castigated again (albeit a much larger percentage of caucasian population), arguing those white people who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 should be “destroyed.” [‘MSNBC Panelist On Most White People: ‘Destroy Them’: In a Sunday segment on MSNBC, Elie Mystal called for the majority of white people in America to be destroyed., The Federalist, August 12, 2019]:

In a feisty segment on Sunday’s “A.M. Joy,” Elie Mystal of Above the Law made an inflammatory comment in which he said white people who voted for Donald Trump should be destroyed. This came after a segment in which he argued there is no moral difference between avowed white supremacists and any white person who votes for Trump. In the clip, host Joy Reid asked how those who are “drugged” by the president’s rhetoric should be communicated to and convinced they are wrong. That’s when Mystal got even more heated, saying: “You don’t communicate to them, you beat them. You beat them. They are not a majority of this country — the majority of white people in this country are not a majority of the country. All the people who are not fooled by this need to come together, go to the polls, go to the protests, do whatever you have to do. You do not negotiate with these people, you destroy them.” Ironically, this comment came on the same day the New York Times ran a piece arguing that Fox News is inciting white supremacist violence by using words such as “invasion” to describe the situation at the border. A double standard is at work here, and it has become increasingly blatant throughout Trump’s presidency. When his supporters use fiery language and hyperbole, it is incitement to violence, but when progressives do the same thing, it is justified outrage. Even the most generous interpretation of his comments — that “beat them” and “destroy them” mean at the polls — leaves some very troubling question. Are all of these tens of millions of people to be shunned and kicked out of polite society? If they are so horribly irredeemable that others cannot communicate or negotiate with them, what would Mystal have us do with them? ORDER IT NOW Furthermore, Mystal fails to mention that Trump got nearly 30% of the Hispanic vote in 2016. Perhaps he doesn’t think conservative Hispanics are real Hispanics, but that isn’t really his call to make. His misleading effort to make it seem as though only white people voted for Trump erases millions and millions of nonwhite voters. Many Americans of all political stripes have rightly come to believe that our political rhetoric has become too heated. Along with others, I have argued that conservatives should fight harder against progressivism. But you fight the ideology, not the people. For some, the politics is now irrelevant, and it’s just about hating people you don’t like. This seems to be where Mystal has arrived.

Calling Trump [and by default, his supporters] a bigot didn’t work.

Calling him a racist didn’t work.

Calling him a white nationalist didn’t work.

Calling him a white supremacist hasn’t worked.

Thus, we are now at a point in American politics where a black man can go on MSNBC and argue white Trump supporters must be “destroyed.”

And to think, six years ago on the same channel, a black professor was only arguing for more white kids dying, not see tens of millions of whites “destroyed.”

Welcome to the current year!

There’s no getting off this ride.