Where did Senator Mitch McConnell study American History?

Ahhhh?  Let me guess. Senator McConnell went to school in Kentucky. * 

African Americans are Americans #MitchPlease! Echo opinion by Jonathan Capehart, published in The Washington Post:

“I *am* American. #mitchplease”

Maine Writer opinion: There’s no question in my mind about the root cause of Senator Mitch McConnell’s misstatement about African-Americans who vote. He is a native son of Kentucky and, therefore, he was never really educated to understand his own state’s racist history or how racism is insidious. Should someone send Senator McConnell a copy of the book “How To Be An AntiRacist”, by Ibram X. Kendi? Even if he is given this important book, #MitchPlease will likely have to pay someone to read it to him, because Senator McConnell is obviously racially illiterate.

Hold up! Did Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) say what I thought he said?

When asked on Wednesday what he would tell voters of color who fear they won’t be able to vote in November’s midterm elections because of the Senate’s failure to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the Kentucky Republican said, “If you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high percentage as Americans.”

First off, McConnell knows how misleading this is. He ignores all the hoops and hurdles Black voters (and the young and the elderly) have to jump through and over not only to register to vote, but to actually cast a vote on Election Day. This doesn’t even take into account the millions who are being discouraged from even trying to vote.

But secondly — and far more importantly — African Americans are Americans. Isn’t it sad that really the only times I feel seen as an American are when I’m abroad? I’m not saying racism doesn’t exist outside of the United States. What I am saying is that the rest of the world can see that I’m American. Why is it so hard for so many White Americans?

When you’re Black in the United States, you grudgingly grow accustomed to having people deny that your existence is integral to everything that makes this country what it is. 

"I’m so American I don’t even know which part of Africa Mitch’s ancestors stole mine from!!," Paula Dunn Brown.

Usually, I roll my eyes and keep going in response to such nonsense. McConnell insists he misspoke; I have a hard time with that, since the leader is known to choose carefully what he says. But no matter how they came about, the words are illustrative of how Black people are seen by our fellow citizens. And the more I thought about them, the angrier the offense made me. I needed to respond.

I love taking photos of the American flag fluttering in the wind. So I hunted through my Google archive to find one of me with Old Glory in the background. What I found was a 2017 selfie, taken aboard a ferry in San Francisco Bay. I’m swaddled in a hat, coat and scarf, staring down at the camera that also captured the stars and stripes and crisp blue sky behind me.

I wish I could take credit for the hashtag. The play on the tart rejoinder the phrase rhymes with is used almost nightly by MSNBC’s Joy Reid to rebuke McConnell for whatever it is he’s done that day. It perfectly summed up my attitude about what McConnell said — and my irritation at the mind-set the comment represents. I’m tired of rhetoric and actions that seek to cleave me from my country.

The reaction to the post showed me I’m far from alone, and that African Americans weren’t the only ones offended by a politician saying the quiet part out loud: The hashtag has been trending on Twitter for the past two days. And Black Americans across the country have joined me in the selfie strategy, posting pictures of themselves and demanding their place in the American story:

“100% American,” they said.

“I am an American that served America in the United States Army!”

“I am an American and nothing Mitch says will ever change that!”

Paula Dunn Brown from Dallas issued a particularly devastating twist on the tweet. The look on her face in the accompanying photo could speak for just about every Black person in the United States.

Even if the measured McConnell did misspeak, the slip shows how ossified the assumptions in our political discourse still are: “White” is always the default. Talk of suburban voters is really about White suburban voters. Women voters really means White women. And, as McConnell put it, American voters really means White American voters.

With #mitchplease, I was channeling my inner Langston Hughes. “I, too, am America,” he concluded in his 1926 poem “I, Too.” That this truth must be reiterated and reclaimed in 2022 is a shame.

Follow Jonathan on Twitter: @Capehartj.
Jonathan Capehart

*Slave or Free: Slavery was first introduced to Kentucky during its territorial days, and for nearly the first 40 years of its statehood, Kentucky’s population of slaves grew faster than that of whites. By 1830, slaves constituted 24 percent of all Kentuckians, although this ratio dropped to 19.5 percent by 1860. Slave owners in Kentucky numbered more than 38,000 in 1860, the third highest total behind Virginia and Georgia. Like most slave states, Kentucky was not a land of large plantations: 22,000 of its slave holders — or 57 percent — owned four or fewer slaves.

Kentucky’s most ardent proponents of slavery came from the state’s south and west sections, where the lifestyle most resembled that of the Deep South.