Thomas Roberts, during a panel on the Zimmerman verdict, urged MSNBC to adopt an "I am other" agenda in a powerful statement about systemic discrimination and hate in the U.S.
Said Roberts (via Mediaite)
Don't we need to do more about our social contract with each other in this country when it comes to being others? Because, as we look at this, we can use this as a great pivot point to talk about race relations in this country.
But, being an “other,” whether it's LGBT, because you're suspected of being a pedophile and a rabid disease carrier.
And if you are a woman, well you don't have a right to your own body and your own reproductive health, because if you do you're a slut that wants to sleep around and use abortion as birth control.
And then, if you're Hispanic, you want to lay off the land and have anchor babies and you just want to lay off the land.
Isn't that the — and I want to challenge this network: we had to have an “I am other” agenda and have a forum for it, because others need to unite to talk about this and figure out where we are going as a country.
The social contract that we have currently negotiated that is so wrong and how this is happening in a country where we have this huge group of people that– it's supposed to be a melting pot but we treat each other with such disdain it's not each funny.
Roberts' speech was greeted with an "amen" by the other panelists.
Watch, AFTER THE JUMP…
