Former president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and legal analyst Maya Wiley on Wednesday issued a scathing rebuke of Fox News' and Republicans' latest criticism of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Referring to Donald Trump's, his allies' and right-wing media's recent attacks specifically on Harris' race and gender, MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace pointed to a video clip from an Asian American Pacific Islander event the vice president attended in Washington, DC earlier this year, in which she directly addressed those kinds of attacks.
"Here’s the thing about breaking barriers," Harris said during her speech. "Breaking barriers does not mean you start on one side of the barrier, and you end up on the other side. There’s breaking involved, and when you break things, you get cut, and you may bleed, and it is worth it every time. To especially the young people here, I say to you, when you walk in those rooms, being the only one that looks like you, the only one with your background, you walk in those rooms, chin up, shoulders back, be it a meeting room, a boardroom, a courtroom, a hearing room, you walk in those rooms, knowing that we are all in that room with you, applauding you on and expecting certain things from you, including that you will not be silent in those rooms."
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Quoting her mother’s advice, the VP emphasized, "We have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open, sometimes they won't. And then you need to kick that f---ing door down."
Referencing Harris' words, Wiley told Wallace, "We have been cut. We lived that cut as students at Ivy League schools. We lived that cut when we were lawyers standing in front of a judge the said, 'Where's the lawyer?' when you're standing there behind the government table as an assistant United States attorney. We know that cut. I was the only Black attorney in the civil division when I was there. The only one out of 50."
The former New York City mayoral candidate continued, "They have been telling us — and I'm talking about a certain group of people — a certain group of people who are victimized by fairness, who are victimized by competition from the competent. And who are upset because they have for so long gotten to be mediocre and rise. Those of us who had to be better than mediocre to get cut are so many. They just attacked Kamala Harris for being in a Black sorority. So I wore my Delta Sigma Theta colors. Joy Reid might wear hers later. The Divine Nine has 4 million Black votes. When you saw that $81 million in 24 hours, that was over 44,000 black women, many of them [a part of] the Divine Nine."
"Their fog horn is what is reminding folks that we are not in the America yet that lives up to its ideals," Wiley added. "We haven't been. But we made real progress. And when they are showing us who they are, when they're calling us 'colored' — Fox News — they're talking about colored, [former Trump deputy assistant] Sebastian Gorka called her 'colored'. That's language that nobody uses anymore. And it's not a dog whistle. It's saying we're going to go back to when you were in the back of the bus. And we're going to tell you we're going to put government resources to ensuring that white men get protected."
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Wiley emphasized, "Well, to the extent that there's a grievance, let me tell you what the only grievance is: Anybody who says this country shouldn't be its better angels, and that we shouldn't recognize actual qualification in a woman of color, and that they have come for our vote — yes, and I'm wearing my shirt, because we at the Leadership Conference have a campaign called 'And Still I Vote' because they have been doing everything in their power to make it harder for us to vote, intentionally. So instead of trying to get our votes — which is exactly what should be happening here — instead they are trying to make white people afraid of us. That is what we fought a Civil War over, and had the second Reconstruction over, and this is what's at stake now. And when she says we won't go back, she's saying, 'Keep on cutting 'cause we [are] coming.'"
Watch the video below or at this link.
