J. Pharoah Doss: The Breakfast Club’s legal illiteracy

US REPRESENTATIVE BYRON DONALDS& Recently, Republican US Representative Byron Donalds was on the Breakfast Club radio show along with former CNN political commentator Angela Rye. The show booked Rye to expose the flaws in Donalds’ “Black Republican thinking.” Rye reminded Donalds of his statement: “The success of Black people like himself was evidence that America was no longer a racist country, and America was the best place for Blacks to reach their full potential.” Rye pointed out that Black men were “lynched by the carceral state,” referring to the death row inmates recently executed in South Carolina and Missouri. ANGELA RYE Rye viewed these executions as evidence of America’s ongoing racism, but her example highlighted “systemic racism.” In other words, Blacks make up 13% of the US population but account for 42% of death row inmates; the disproportional rate indicates the presence of systemic racism. Donalds was not referring to “systemic racism.” What he claimed no longer existed was racism based on the belief in black inferiority—the racism that gave rise to Jim Crow, the racism that reduced Black people to second-class citizens, inhibited their development, and hampered their potential to achieve. Rye stated that Republicans voted against the John...