A CPAC panel discussion titled “Trump The Race Card: Are You Sick And Tired Of Being Called A Racist When You Know You’re Not One?” turned into a jaw-dropping affair when a participant claimed slavery was good for African Americans, and asked whether Republicans could support races remaining separate but equal.
Scott Terry, a thirty-year old man from North Carolina, and fine representative of Tea Party Republicans, rose to address the discussion leader of the discussion, K. Carl Smith from the Frederick Douglass Republicans.
Terry said that the growth of diversity in the party and outreach to black conservatives has been “at the expense of young, white. Southern males like myself.” Smith responded by telling a story about a letter that abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass wrote to his former slave owner forgiving him for holding him in servitude. “For giving him shelter and food?” asked Terry, as some members of the audience gasped and others laughed. As we know, Republicans 'live to laugh.'
After the exchange, Terry muttered under his breath, “why can’t we just have segregation?” noting the Constitution’s protections for freedom of association.
Terry told Think Progress he'd “be fine” with a society with blacks subservient to whites. African Americans, he said, should vote in Africa. Terry claims the Tea Party agrees with him, and perhaps he's right – about that only! Last year several Republican state legislators in Arkansas endorsed slavery in books. One went so far as to claim that slavery “may have been a blessing” for slaves – after all, it brought them out of Africa and into the land of milk and honey.