Talk show host Bill Maher said there's a "weaponization" of White guilt and an attempt to exaggerate racism in America as he debated the issue with liberal journalist Kara Swisher this week on the comedian's "Club Random" podcast.
Maher pointed out two different groups: the erasers of the past and the exaggerators of racism. Swisher agreed on the different camps but said some people are "100%" trying to erase history.
"Some people are trying to erase it and some people are trying to exaggerate it. There's a lot of weaponization of white [guilt]," Maher said, to which Swisher agreed.
"I don't know why you have to equalize them because the erasers are the real danger of that," Swisher said.
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Maher disagreed.
"I think there's a lot of bad that comes from people weaponizing White guilt is what I was going to say. Because you preach, on the one hand, like Joe Biden the other day, that you have to work 10 times as hard, that the world is just so stacked against you, which is not, first of all, it's not true," Maher said. "It can be somewhat stacked against you and it can help you somewhat to be a person of color. I certainly know this personally, anecdotally from people."
"Of course there are statistics about it," he added. "I mean I think a third of — was it 2022 — a third of white kids applying to college lied and said they were people of color. I'm not saying racism is over or that it's all better to be Black, no, but it's a lot more complicated than it used to be."
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Swisher said erasure like "the banning of books" is "very different" when people want to teach the "real history, actual history" of racism.
"I think that is mostly a bull*** charge," Maher interjected. "I was in that all-White town. We talked about before, New Jersey, like in the 1960s, we learned what slavery was and we learned it was wrong."
"They weren't erasing history," he added.
"So why is the Republican Party obsessed with not talking about it anymore?" Swisher asked.
"Because part of it is a reaction to the 1619 kind of idea [Ibram] X. Kendi and Robin D'Angelo that racism is everything," Maher responded. "That's what critical race theory really means, and I would agree it is America's biggest baddest, awfulest sin. There is no close second, but not everything is racism."
