A new video has been released showing an encounter between a self-described segregationist and a black radio host during a Conservative Political Action Conference session on race.
The session, entitled “Trump the Race Card: Are You Sick And Tired Of Being Called A Racist When You Know You’re Not One?” was hosted by a black tea party activist, K. Carl Smith, who at one point was questioned by Scott Terry, a North Carolina man who said he was there to stand up for his “demographic” and that Smith’s advice on how conservatives and Republicans could reach out to minority voters was coming “at the expense of young white Southern males.”
Terry, a member of a group called the White Student Union, had a tense exchange with an African-American woman radio host, Kim Brown, over slavery, after Terry responded to Smith’s assertion that Frederick Douglass — for whom Smith’s organization is named — eventually forgave his slave master. Brown objected to Terry’s question of whether Douglass had forgiven his enslaver for “giving him food and shelter all those years.”
Video of the exchange, and Smith’s attempt to interject, spread across the Internet after last week’s CPAC conference, and several reports stated that it was Brown, not Terry, who earned the ire of many in attendance at the event. Now, new video has emerged that shows the interchange from a new angle.
Tommy Christopher of Mediaite writes:
After the incident became a mid-sized news story, documentary filmmaker Katy Jordan posted a longer clip of the event, shot mere feet away from Terry and Kim Brown, the radio host who says she was shouted down by the crowd when she tried to ask the moderator a question.
Jordan’s clip, shot for filmmaker Kevin Dotson‘s forthcoming documentary called Black Tea, features cleaner audio, a closer point of view, and about forty more seconds than the version that made the rounds on cable news. In the extended clip, an organizer steps in to say “I love the passion, especially on this topic,” but asks the crowd to be “respectful” of those who came to hear the presentation, as Terry shouts “Respect my demographic!”
You can also hear Kim Brown tell Terry that “Slavery was not a benefit to black people,” to which Terry replies “That’s your opinion.”
“That’s not opinion, that’s a fact,” Brown replies.
Then, an attendee behind Kim Brown begins to engage her by saying something about “what happened to white factory workers,” to which she responds with an incredulous “What are you talking about?”
Christopher notes that the reactions of people at the event seemed much more focused on the radio host, who Smith in a later statement said interrupted him and several speakers:
I was invited by the Tea Party Patriots to conduct a breakout session entitled: “Trump The Race Card” and share the Frederick Douglass Republican Message. In the middle of my delivery, while discussing the 1848 “Women’s Rights Convention,” I was rudely interrupted by a woman working for the Voice of Russia. She abruptly asked me: “How many black women were there?” This question was intentionally disruptive and coercive with no way of creating a positive dialogue.
In addition, a young man who wasn’t a Tea Party Patriot, made some racially insensitive comments, he said: “Blacks should be happy that the slave master gave them shelter, clothing, and food.” At the conclusion of the breakout session, I further explained to him the Frederick Douglass Republican Message which he embraced, bought a book, and we left as friends.
And Christopher notes in a Mediaite post today:
This angle is a window into what it might have felt like to be Scott Terry, or Kim Brown, at that event, and what’s remarkable is that, while Terry keeps anticipating the crowd’s negative reaction (“I’ll just let people throw stuff at me”), it never materializes. There’s (perhaps shocked) laughter, some clapping, and some pushback from Kim Brown, but no audible indication that anyone else in that room challenged Terry’s assertions. Even the host speaker, K. Carl Smith, never got around to answering Terry’s question “Why can’t we be segregated?”
At best, the reaction was a response to the absurdity of what Terry was saying, but it never gave way to disgust at the depravity of his premise. I don’t presume to be the arbiter of how people should react to things, and I do believe that one of the ways that this clip has been oversold is the degree to which this crowd was representative of CPAC as a whole. People voluntarily attending a seminar that is premised on racism being a “card” would seem to be much more likely to accept, if not agree with, arguments about the “disenfranchisement” of white people.
Representative or not, though, the vibe was consistent with popular conservative attitudes about race. The ability to speak about things like slavery, segregation, and racism as abstractions is a privilege that, in my view, automatically disqualifies the speaker. If the only way you have ever experienced racism is by having people accuse you of it even though you know you are not, then you’re probably not in a position to know whether slavery was a warm hammock for black people, or whether the free market should decide where black people can eat in public.
Follow Joy Reid on Twitter at @thereidreport.