US Senator Tom Cotton Blasted for Slavery Comments

WASHINGTON, KOMPAS.com – US Senator Tom Cotton is facing substantial backlash following his slavery comments which he said America’s founders found was a “necessary evil.”

The Republican senator is seen as a possible 2024 US presidential candidate.

Tom Cotton shared his views on slavery in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

He also attacked the New York Times 1619 Project’s effort to make slavery a focal point of American history for US schools during the interview.

The New York Times 1619 Project was launched last year to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the arrival of African slaves on America's shores.

It would place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of African-Americans at the center of US history.

Cotton wants to withhold federal tax money from an elementary and secondary school curriculum promoted by the project.

Criticism of Cotton's remark was swift.

"If chattel slavery — heritable, generational, permanent, race-based slavery where it was legal to rape, torture, and sell human beings for profit — were a 'necessary evil' as @TomCottonAR says, it's hard to imagine what cannot be justified if it is a means to an end," tweeted Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who launched the 1619 Project.

Robert Reich, who was US Labor secretary under former President Bill Clinton, sought to tie Cotton's remarks to the 2020 election battle for control of the Senate.

"This, my friends, is today's GOP. Make sure they lose control of the Senate on November 3. In fact, make sure they lose control of everything. They've lost the right to govern," Reich said on Twitter.

But the Arkansas Republican, who is running for reelection this year, dismissed news coverage that he had described slavery as a necessary evil.

"This is the definition of fake news," Cotton wrote on Twitter. "I said that *the Founders viewed slavery as a necessary evil*."

In response, Hannah-Jones tweeted: "You said, quote: 'As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built.' That 'as' denotes agreement."

The New York Times came under criticism earlier this year for publishing a column by Tom Cotton urging the federal government to use the military to put down street protests over police violence and racial injustice.

The op-ed publication led to the opinion editor's resignation.

(Writer: David Morgan | Editors: Scott Malone, Jonathan Oatis, Howard Goller) 

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-race-usa-cotton/republican-senator-cotton-criticized-for-necessary-evil-slavery-comment-idUSKCN24S1MP