Chris Hayes’ “A Colony in a Nation” (Joshua Johnson, 1A)

In the long, hot summer of 1968, Richard Nixon accepted the Republican nomination for President with a speech in Miami that promised ‘law and order’.

Racial tensions were running high. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated; destructive riots had torn through major US cities; and the ink on America’s civil rights legislation had barely dried. But there was Nixon, speaking at the Republican National Convention, offering hope for a better day.

“Let us build bridges,” he said. “Build bridges to human dignity across that gulf that separates black America from white America. Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don’t want to be a colony in a nation.”

That last line — “a colony in a nation” — stands out to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. Because nearly 50 years later, Hayes argues— that is exactly what we have created for black and brown Americans.
Interview:
http://the1a.org/shows/2017-03-22/chris-hayes-a-colony-in-a-nation