Monday on CNN’s “NewsNight,” network contributor Bakari Sellers made the declaration that Republicans had “swapped out Klan hoods for Brooks Brothers suits.”
Host Abby Phillip said, “You have the president, President Trump sending a message to South Carolina, your home state Bakari, saying the South Carolina state Senate which has a big vote tomorrow on redistricting. He says, ‘Republicans be bold and courageous, just like the Republicans of the great state of Tennessee, where last week moved the US House primaries to August. Leave the rest. This is on the same schedule. Everything will be fine. Get it done.’ So we’re we’re going beyond new maps here. And now we’re tinkering with the with the calendar, people are voting. Maybe those votes get thrown out. It’s chaos.”
Sellers said, “I mean, not only is it chaos, but you’re literally throwing out votes, as you said. I watched 60 Minutes with Governor Landry from, Louisiana throwing out votes and he chuckled about it. In South Carolina, people have already voted from overseas and you chuckle about it. I want to take a step back and look at this from a 50,000ft view, to be completely honest. I think Ashley and I have to wrestle with the fact that we are going to be the first generation to actually leave this country worse than the one that we inherited. And I think for black Millennials the progress that our parents and grandparents gave us that we’re watching being ripped away from us is something that our generation’s going to have to really wrestle with. And figuring out how we get out of this conundrum. If somebody fell asleep in 1896 and woke up today in 2026, they would simply say, the only difference is now Negroes have a TV show and we wear nice suits.”
He added, “They they swapped out Klan hoods for Brooks Brothers suits. And that is the problem. I mean, Plessy v Ferguson was seven one, and it gave birth to 50 years of Jim Crow. What we have with this court right now, what we’re seeing is watching people who have fought and died and bled so that we would have access to the ballot box so that we would have access to our voices being heard in Congress being ripped away. And I think that there is a casual laughter from people we believe to be our friends on the right who are showing us true colors today because one of the most sacred acts you have in the United States of America is the ability to cast a ballot and elect someone and send them to Congress, the state House or mayoral seat that represent your interest and now black folks throughout the South are being silenced. And I don’t find that to be a laughing matter.”
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