Al Sharpton Puts Jefferson Memorial on Notice – National Review
Asked by Charlie Rose (at the 15:30 mark) should they take down the Jefferson Memorial? Al Sharptonreflected on the nature of slavery then answered a different question: whether the federal government should support the memorial. Sharpton said it should not. When you look at the fact thatpublic monuments are supported by public funds youre asking me to subsidize the insult of my family. I would repeat that the public should not be paying to uphold somebody who has had that kind of background. You have private museums, you have other things that you may want to do there.
The Jefferson Memorial obviously cant be placed in a museum. Im not sure how privatizing it would work but I doubt the protesters whoare surely coming to it will much worry about that detail.
Sharpton also said(at the 11:55 mark),in the course of criticizing President Trumps reaction to Charlottesville,Ivein my own career wrestled, youve got to deal openly and say, no, Im not gonna be with those elements, Im not going to deal with violence. Ive had to deal with that.Im not saying anything that a lot of public officials havent had to struggle with, which is why Im saying, he knows better. Every one of us knows when youre around extremists that you need to say, Wait a minute, Im going topart company.
After Sharptonplayed a key role in the 1991 riots in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, ittook him 20 years to issue what The Forward called the closest he will probably ever come to an apology (our language and tone sometimes exacerbated tensions and played to the extremists) though heclaimed he saw brick-throwing on all sidesduring the unrest, which he helped instigate. Aftera black youth was accidentally killed by a car driven by a Jew, Sharptonsaid these words at a service for the deceased: Talk about howOppenheimerinSouth Africasends diamonds straight toTel Avivand deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid. . . . All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no coffee klatsch, no skinnin and grinnin. A mob responded by murdering a rabbinical student and rioting for three days.
Sharptonin 1995 damned the Jewish owner of a sneaker store in Harlem at an angry rallybroadcast on local radioduring which he called the stores ownera white interloper and added, We are asking the buy blackcommittee to go down there, and Im going to go down there and do what is necessary to let them know that we are not turning 125th Street back over to the outsiders that was done in the early part of this century. . . .This is a sin and a shame and a disgrace, and we should not under any circumstances sit by and allow this to happen without a major reaction and major protest from us. One of the demonstrators who besieged the store shouting racist and anti-Semitic epithetslater killed seven people and himself in an arson attack on it.
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Al Sharpton Puts Jefferson Memorial on Notice - National Review