https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/10155578313466509/
THE WORLD IS still a little in shock. Both supporters and detractors of president-elect Donald Trump are surely feeling a little blown away by what they witnessed overnight.
But one political commentator on CNN’s live coverage simply cut a forlorn, emotional figure. Long before Hillary Clinton’s concession, Van Jones wanted to talk about race.
“People talk about a miracle tonight. I’m thinking about a nightmare,” he said.
It’s hard to be a parent tonight for a lot of us. You tell your kids don’t be a bully. You tell your kids don’t be a bigot. You tell your kids do your homework and be prepared. Then you have this outcome. There are parents putting their children to bed tonight and they’re afraid of breakfast.
How do I explain this to my children.
“I have Muslim friends texting me tonight saying ‘should I leave the country?’ I have a family of immigrants that are terrified tonight. This was many things. It was a rebellion against the elites, it was a complete reinvention of politics and polls it’s true. But it was also something else.”
Whitelash
Jones said that he and his fellow panellists had talked about “everything but race tonight”.
“We’ve talked about income, we’ve talked about class, we’ve talked about region, we haven’t talked about race,” he said.
This was a whitelash. This was a whitelash against a changing country, it was a whitelash against a black president in part, and that’s the part where the pain comes.
And Donald Trump has a responsibility tonight to reassure people that he will be the president of the people that he has insulted, and offended and brushed aside.
“When you say you want to take your country back, you have a lot of people who are not represented well either, but we don’t want to feel that someone has been elected by throwing away some of us to appeal more deeply to others. This is a deeply painful moment tonight,” Jones added.
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