Cory Booker Says to White Moderates, ‘It’s Not Enough To Say You’re Not Racist’
EXCERPT:
BOOKER: "You know, I consider many of them friends. I was texting with one of them this morning. You know, Angela Davis said when racism exists, it's not enough to say that you're not a racist. You need to be an anti-racist. If you sit by and watch bigotry, attacks on gay and lesbian kids, 30 percent in America who report not going to school because of fear, rise in attacks on Muslims in our country. I mean, if you just sit by and just content yourself with just not being what Donald Trump is, I think in many ways, as King wrote eloquently, the entire Letter from Birmingham Jail, it's not a letter to racist, that's a letter to people — white moderates who were content to sit down and not find an urgency to meet that hatred with a more activist, radical love. And so, I just am somebody that believes it's not enough to not stand up there and be an ally that's willing to stand like Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner did, to Jewish Americans, white Americans who were willing to die side by side with a black American fighting for the rights of African Americans to vote. That's the kind of courage and heroism, and that's why Republicans, many of whom in this town will tell me in private how upset they are, but I'm now realizing why the book Profiles in Courage is such a thin volume."
