Don Lemon is fed up.
Who knew a year ago that CNN’s Don Lemon would turn out to be the most outspoken and militant black man in television news media?
Continuing his trend of calling it like he sees it, Lemon went on a tear during a segment on Chris Cuomo’s show Monday night and declared that white men are the biggest terror threats in the United States of America and marveled at the fact that there isn’t a travel ban against them.
“We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them,” Lemon told Cuomo.
“There is no travel ban on them,” he added. “There is no ban on—you know, they had the Muslim ban. There is no white guy ban.”
Lemon’s comments made him the target of widespread right-wing criticism from the likes of Breitbart, the Federalist, Fox News and Donald Trump Jr., but you know what?
Don Lemon is right.
In a tweet criticizing Lemon, Donnie Jr. wrote, “Amazing. I thought this was some sort of joke quote taken out of context but no ... it’s just Don Lemon being a moron. Unfortunately, this is how so many leftists actually think. Disgusting! Imagine the outrage if you changed “white men” with any other demographic?”
The irony is making me constipated.
First of all, does Donnie Jr. realize that his father makes broad generalizations about every other race except white people on a daily basis? Does he realize that his father’s hate speeches are the reason two white men plotted to bomb a Somali Muslim community in Kansas? Did he not hear that his father openly claimed his white nationalism recently? Did it slip by him that his father recently advocated for Chicago police to use racial profiling as a means of curbing gun violence?
The list of Don Sr.’s racist comments and transgressions is long and exhausting, but as is the way of the right, they only care when white people are the target—specifically white men.
It doesn’t matter that there is specific evidence just within this last week that white men are terrorists; the right wing doesn’t care about facts.
When you have a white man who reportedly intentionally shot and killed innocent black people at a grocery store, another arrested for targeting people the president has named as his “enemies” with pipe bombs, and yet another charged with shooting up a Jewish synagogue, the writing is on the wall in big gigantic fluorescent letters that blink and have loud music playing out of them.
The right is turning a deaf ear to all of that.
Some of this country’s biggest tragedies—like the Oklahoma City bombing, the Aurora, Colo., movie theater shooting, Dylann Roof shooting up a black church, the Las Vegas shooting last October—were committed by radicalized or just plain crazy white men, but that is easily ignored by the right in favor of demonizing black and brown people.
Where is the travel ban against white men? I want to be able to grocery shop, go to the movies or visit a place of worship in peace. I don’t want to have to be looking over my shoulder every time a see a suspicious looking white man walking near me.
White men are the biggest terror threat in this country.
You are a liar and full of shit if you don’t acknowledge that.