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Fox News being insensitive about racism? Could’ve seen that one coming.
The latest controversy from the network comes following a guest who appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show and said African Americans “need to move on” from slavery because it was abolished “a century-and-a-half ago”.
Mark Steyn is a cultural commentator and made these comments on Thursday, during a segment discussing 2020 presidential candidates who are in favor of some sort of reparations for African Americans. During his rant on the topic, Steyn said: “Slavery was abolished a century and a half ago, nobody alive today has a grandparent who was a slave, and in that sense I think you reach a point where, you know, you need to move on.
“The reparations thing, eventually, as the decades go by, becomes ridiculous,” he continued.
Not stopping there, Steyn then went on to compare the experience of Black people in America to Canadians like himself–who he claimed also deserve reparations on the basis that if “[America] hadn’t had the revolution, the whole continent would now be Canada”.
As Steyn spoke, comparing the hardships faced by African Americans to Canadians, the host responded by interjecting a “yeah” before laughing along with the guest’s comments.
The conversation then went on to specifically address 2020 contender Senator Kamala Harris, who supports the idea of reparations for African Americans.
The segment ended with Steyn contending that Harris’s “own experience is entirely apart from the African-American slave experience,” and that she is getting involved in “identity politics,” which Carlson quickly agreed with.
Unsurprisingly, once the clip of this conversation surfaced online, it was met with tons of backlash on social media.
This latest controversy from the Fox News host comes after previous comments he’d made that cost him a significant portion of his advertisers.
In December, Carlson–who is friends with Donald Trump–said that immigration makes America “dirtier”. The comment was rightfully met with widespread backlash and resulted in more than 20 sponsors pulling their advertisements from the primetime show.