Originally published at: Rep. explains why two lawmakers were expelled from Tennessee House: "They are 2 young Black men" | Boing Boing
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Good for her for telling the truth on why this happened as it did…
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For a moment I thought this was a case of someone accidentally saying the quiet part out loud but, no, State Representative Johnson is speaking very deliberately and very accurately.
Also it’s becoming increasingly likely that at least one of the legislators expelled will be coming back.
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If there’s any silver lining it’s that Justin Jones just got more well known outside Tennessee. I want to hear more from him after that speech.
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Yeah, if all three of them are accused of the same conduct, what makes the white woman different from the two young black men? Hmm …
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I feel lucky to have voted for him and, while I’d like to see him return to the legislature, I’ll support him just as much if he takes this as an opportunity to pursue something bigger. If the city of Nashville hadn’t been cut in half by gerrymandering we might have been able to send him to Congress.
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So in addition to being racist, the Republicans in the Tennessee state legislature are idiots. All they had to do to create plausible deniability against a charge of racism was to expel all three, but they couldn’t bring themselves to do it.
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they know that they don’t need to do that now. We’re in full on fascist territory that if allowed to stand will mean more awful things to go for Black Tennesseans.
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I’m a little surprised they didn’t expel every non-white person in the legislature. They’ve clearly decided their future lies with the Klan.
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Well, they can’t be that obvious yet… they still need fig leaf to hide their bigotry. But still… full on fascism.
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But the legislature can simply refuse to seat him. So there’s that.
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Sounds a lot like “literacy tests.” I bet these two would do better on the US Citizenship Exam than the people who’ve expelled them.
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Not if the Mayor of Memphis continues his behind the scenes campaign to stop it. He was promised FedEx money for a new hub if he goes along. The Holler just broke the news. The democratic mayor at that!
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The expulsion is highly disturbing. What is going to stop republicans from taking this behavior further? If they do, what’s to stop any majority republican house from simply expelling all from the opposing party ?
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same. it was powerful, accurate, and brave. no wonder he won his seat in the first place!
one yet unmentioned consequence is i think this will make democrats even more unwilling to do anything about clarence thomas.
they’ll be scared of it being said they’re doing the same thing, and they’ll be unable to convey the difference. ( in part, because most of the media won’t help articulate that difference in their attempt to seem unbiased )
and, i suspect the fact thomas is black will make it additionally hard for white democrats because so many of them are also unwilling to untangle their own issues around race.
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And of course, they threaten against that.
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I don’t believe they were even looking at plausible deniability. I think they wanted to send an explicit message.
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But also, why was anyone expelled for expressing a political opinion in a political body?!!
It’s very important that we be talking about the racist component of this and I’m glad we are. However we should also be talking about the fact that two (would be three save one vote) politicians were kicked out of elected office because their opponents disagreed with them.
If that doesn’t send a chill down the spines of everyone in Tennessee, I don’t know what will.
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