National Press Secretary of the Human Rights Campaign Sarah McBride responded to verifiable racist Clint Eastwood’s recent comments on Donald Trump’s racist: “just fucking get over it.”
Clint Eastwood was born in 1930. Let's start a list of things that weren't considered racist when he was growing up. pic.twitter.com/xuySp45dZv
— Sarah McBride (@SarahEMcBride) August 4, 2016
McBride then listed 13 items, which did not even cover nearly the full spectrum of racism that was tolerated in Clint Eastwood’s time.
- Jim Crow
- A segregated military
- Dismissing the concept of a black president
- Poll taxes
- Opposition to federal anti-lynching laws
- Using racist words and descriptions
- Membership in the Ku Klux Klan
- Forbidding people of color from entire professions
- Housing discrimination
- Forbidding black people from talking to white people
- Anti-miscegenation laws
- Jim Crow again
- Literally the entire experience of being black in America in the 1930s
Other Twitter users, including MSNC correspondent Joy-Ann Reid, added to McBride’s list:
Did anyone add "lynching" yet? https://t.co/llYw0RR0zo
— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) August 4, 2016
Denying citizens the right to vote. The right to eat at restaurants, stay at hotels, work jobs that are for Whites https://t.co/HSPhDWYD0e
— She's So Mean (@3ambarbie) August 4, 2016
14) blackface
— Will McAvoy (@WillMcAvoyACN) August 4, 2016
Screenwriter James Moran also noted:
Clint Eastwood is right, it wasn't called "racist" when he was growing up. But now it is. That's what happens when you grow up.
— James Moran (@jamesmoran) August 3, 2016
Clint Eastwood’s comments stem from a rejection of so-called “political correctness,” which, for the most part, is simply bigots complaining about the fact that they’re actually called out for being sexist, racist, ableist, Islamophobic, homophobic, transphobic, and altogether ignorant. As Vox’s Victoria M. Massie explains:
“Political correctness is about holding people accountable for their offensive actions against systemic inequalities that make it seem like there was never a problem in the first place.
Eastwood’s statement depends on a common misunderstanding about political correctness: that it’s about censorship.
That’s a part of Trump’s populist appeal. He’s lauded for being politically incorrect because, unlike Washington insiders, the rationale goes, he is uncensored and isn’t afraid to say anything. That includes kicking off his campaign by accusing Mexican immigrants of being ‘rapists,’ suggesting the US ban Muslims from entering the country, calling Sen. Elizabeth Warren ‘Pocahontas’ on Twitter, or criticizing a Gold Star family.
Political correctness doesn’t stop him from doing those things. That’s one of the blessings of the First Amendment.
Political correctness, instead, aims to hold people accountable for their actions in a world that typically doesn’t force them to take any responsibility. That means that if Trump and others do something racist, they’re probably going to be called out for being racist.
Even though millennials are the most racially diverse generation in American history, and generally more tolerant of racial differences than their predecessors (ahem, Clint), racism continues.
So while Eastwood laments living among a bunch of ‘candy-assess,’ those young ‘candy-assess’ tend to have to call out folks for being racist because many in his generation failed to do the same.”
