Dyson on Winsome Sears: ‘Black face speaking in behalf of a White supremacist’

“To have a Black face speaking in behalf of a White supremacist legacy is nothing new,” Michael Eric Dyson said of Sears’ win.

As a guest Thursday on MSNBC’s The ReidOut, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson addressed this week’s election of Winsome Sears as the first woman and first Black candidate to be elected to a statewide office in Virginia.

Host Joy Reid said Sears’ victory does not mean that racism was not an issue in the election, which saw Republican Glenn Youngkin win the governor’s race. Republicans also won the House of Delegates in the commonwealth.

“The two choices voters had in Virginia were a Black woman who shares my daughter’s name and Jamaican heritage, and an Afro-Latina who is part Lebanese,” Reid noted in her conversation with Dyson. “So you had a choice of two Brown/Black people, and you picked one of them. Do you get credit? Do you get special credit? It’s like I had ice cream or cake as two options, but I want credit for lowering my calorie count because I picked ice cream. You had two choices, and they were both Black!”

Dyson added to Reid’s observation: “They want credit for having hair in the morning or getting up and brushing their teeth. ‘Look, I’ve made an achievement that should be noteworthy.’ No. You are doing what all political figures what must do: make choices. The problem is here they want — they want White supremacy by ventriloquist effect.”

“There is a Black mouth moving but a White idea through the — running on the runway of the tongue of a figure who justifies and legitimates the White supremacist practices,” he continued. “We know that we can internalize in our own minds, in our own subconscious, in our own bodies the very principles that are undoing us. So to have a Black face speaking in behalf of a White supremacist legacy is nothing new. And it is to the chagrin of those of us who study race that the White folk on the other side and the right wingers on the other side don’t understand.”

Dyson noted that having a Black person “undermine and undercut and subvert the very principles about which we are concerned” does not mean Republicans are becoming more progressive.

Sitting in for Reid on Wednesday night’s The ReidOut, Tiffany D. Cross said Youngkin’s election meant that “a good chunk of voters out there are okay with White supremacy. Let’s call a thing a thing. Actually, scratch that. They are more than okay.”

Youngkin’s final campaign push was an appeal to conservative parents with an ad that featured activist Laura Murphy, a mother who worked to give families the choice to opt-out of certain reading material. The ad was called a “racist dog whistle” used to “gin up” extremists in the Republican Party who oppose the teaching of critical race theory.

As previously reported, Sears, an immigrant from Jamaica, said her historic election is living proof that the United States is not a divided country, sending a pointed political message to Democrats on the other side of the aisle.

“There are some who want to divide us and we must not let that happen. They would like us to believe we are back in 1963, when my father came,” said Sears. “We can live where we want, we can eat where want — we own the water fountains,” adding, “We’ve had a Black president elected not once but twice, and here I am living proof … In case you haven’t noticed, I am Black, and I have been Black all my life.”

This article features original reporting from theGrio’s Gerren Keith Gaynor.

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