Conservative strategist Jack Burkman compared the NAACP to the Ku Klux Klan in an interview with
Newsmax TV Monday.
When asked about the
ongoing controversy surrounding an NAACP chapter president claiming she was black, only to be outed over the weekend as a white woman, Burkman called the organization racist during an appearance on "Newsmax Prime."
"The problem is that we have organizations dedicated to race at all," Burkman told host J.D. Hayworth. "That's what this controversy signals to me. Why do we have an organization that's dedicated to the advancement of a group of people with a certain skin color? Forgive me, but that sounds like something awful. It sounds like the Ku Klux Klan is what that sounds like."
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When asked by fellow panel member Ari Rabin-Havt, a former advisor to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, if he was really comparing the two groups to each other, Burkman clarified his remarks.
"No, but they have elements," Burkman said. "I'm comparing them in one sense. In one important sense, they're both racist organizations in that they are all about advancing a group of people with one skin color."
Hayworth then asked Newsmax contributor Larry Elder, also on the panel, if the NAACP was a racist organization.
"No, they're not, but they ought to rename themselves 'National Association for the Advancement of Certain People.' I got that from a Twitter follower because they only want to advance people who are left wing and black," Elder said.
"That's the problem and not just with black people. That's what the left does. For example, Kay Bailey Hutchison, the former Texas Republican senator, was described by Gloria Steinem, the feminist, as a female impersonator. Gloria Allred, the feminist lawyer, referred to Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as 'Uncle Tom types,' and speaking of Harry Reid, Harry Reid once said he doesn't understand why anybody Hispanic would vote Republican because it will be a hostile to their heritage. I mean my goodness."
Burkman closed the segment by definitively saying the NAACP is, in fact, a racist group.
"There's a very important point here. If you are an organization whose sole purpose by definition and by your name is to advance a group of people of a certain race, you are necessarily by definition a racist organization. There's no two ways about that," he said.
Over the weekend, the Rev. Al Sharpton said the parents of Rachel Dolezal, who resigned from her post as the president of the NAACP's Spokane chapter on Monday, are to blame for the controversy engulfing her.
Dolezal pretended to be a black woman for years but her parents said last Friday she was their white daughter.
"On one level, you've got to say to her, you're misleading us, but on another level, mom and dad, come on,"
Sharpton said. "Are we gonna have this dysfunctional family stuff play out and distract us from real key civil rights causes. Be the adults here. You just now noticed she was in the NAACP?
"You've got to ask the question, what are Mom and Dad's motives here … where've you been?"
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