Racist Republican Senator Forgoes The Racist Dog Whistle, Uses a Bullhorn

Donald Trump brought his White Nationalist road show to Minden, Nevada on Saturday, with insurrectionist Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) in tow,  his former claim to fame being the head football coach at the University of Mississippi from 1995 to 1998, at Auburn University from 1999 to 2008, at Texas Tech University from 2010 to 2012, and the University of Cincinnati from 2013 to 2016.

Dean Obeidallah writes at CNN, Tuberville’s racially charged remarks should be condemned:

GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville caused an uproar over the weekend with his comments at a Donald Trump rally in Nevada in which he made racially charged remarks connecting Black people with crime.

Tuberville’s spokeswoman did not respond to CNN’s request for clarification on Saturday night, but a look at Tuberville’s history of racially insensitive comments likely explains why the senator from Alabama was invited to Nevada to help Republican candidates locked in tight races for US senator and governor.

Tuberville: They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that! Bullshit! pic.twitter.com/W3mOP5vte7

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 9, 2022

Tuberville, appearing with Trump in a rural area of Nevada in support of those candidates, first told the crowd that the Democratic Party is “pro-crime, they want crime.” Then he exclaimed, “They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have.” What that means is hard to say, but GOP leaders know their base well, so telling the audience that Democrats want to steal what you have was the message Tuberville believes will animate some Republican voters.

Tuberville’s comment that caused such a backlash must also be viewed in the same light. Raising his voice in anger, the senator shouted, “They want reparations, because they think the people that do the crime are owed that! Bullshit!” That line drew big cheers from the audience, with Tuberville adding, “They are not owed that.”

A reminder that Tommy Tuberville was a collegiate coach for nearly 30 years, during which he coached scores of Black players. He made millions off their abilities, but here’s what he really thinks about Black folks. https://t.co/aFjqocLTNH

— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) October 9, 2022

Connecting reparations — the concept of compensating Black Americans who are the descendants of enslaved people for the inhumane suffering of their ancestors — with people who commit crimes is outrageous — and way beyond a dog whistle.

CNN anchor and senior political correspondent Abby Phillip rightly called it Sunday morning “straight-up racism from a sitting United States senator.” Phillip explained that Tuberville was “talking to white voters about their own preconceived notions of Black people being responsible for crime and not deserving anything as a result.”

Tuberville’s history of trafficking in bigotry backs that up. For starters, in 2011, when Tuberville was still a college football coach, he appeared on Fox News, lending his support to Trump’s birtherism smear of President Barack Obama. “There’s got to be something on there (the birth certificate) that he doesn’t want anybody to see,” the coach said then.

As a candidate for Senate, Tuberville served up a buffet of bigotry, taking aim at many of the go-to targets GOP leaders love to demonize. Like Trump, he claimed immigrants were bringing in “drugs” and “diseases.” Tuberville also came after my own Muslim community with lies such as you “can’t drive through a neighborhood (in certain cities). Why? Because terrorism has taken over. Sharia law has taken over.” That wasn’t true, but Tuberville knows some GOP voters well.

Regarding the LGBTQ community, Tuberville posted on Facebook during his Senate campaign: “Hard to believe that right in my own backyard the city of Opelika allows drag queens in the city Christmas Parade which was held this weekend. What is next?” As a candidate, he also complained on Facebook over reports that Chick-fil-A no longer would donate to charities under fire from LGBTQ activists: “Isn’t it horrible when liberal activists ruin something good?”

As a senator in 2021, Tuberville continued with the dog whistles. For example, he publicly opposed renaming Fort Rucker – a military base in Alabama named in honor of Confederate Gen. Edmund W. Rucker. “You can’t destroy history, you can’t change it,” Tuberville told The Southeast Sun newspaper in Enterprise, Alabama. “We need to learn from history.”

The senator has slammed teaching critical race theory, accusing Democrats of promoting the academic framework to “change the way we view our country.” So, Tuberville wants to keep honoring Confederate generals who fought to preserve slavery while banning students from knowing the full history of slavery and racism in America.

Tuberville, one of only a handful of US senators to challenge President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, has repeatedly told us who he is. None of it is a secret.

And keep in mind, while Tuberville was a football coach for more than two decades before being elected to the Senate, he never coached in Nevada. In fact, for most of his career, he was in the Deep South, coaching at the University of Mississippi and Auburn University in Alabama.

But Nevada is a battleground state, and Republican gubernatorial hopeful Joe Lombardo and Senate candidate Adam Laxalt — who both attended Saturday’s rally — are locked in close races with Democratic incumbentsGov. Steve Sisolak and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, respectively.

So far, neither Laxalt nor Lombardo has denounced Tuberville’s comments on Twitter despite sharing numerous clips from the rally. And it’s unlikely you will see them do so. Laxalt and Lombardo — like Trump and Tuberville — know exactly what excites some GOP voters.

About Minden, Nevada. ABC News reports, Former Nevada ‘sundown town’ stands by siren amid reckoning:

Minden is one of what experts believe were thousands of American communities where discriminatory “sundown” laws were in effect, either through formal ordinances or unwritten rules enforced with intimidation and injury.

The town siren has blared since 1921. Until 1974, it served as a warning to non-white people that they were required to leave town before the sun faded behind the rugged mountaintops of the Carson range.

[A] red siren perched atop a small town’s volunteer fire department sounded every night at 6 p.m., sending a piercing noise echoing through the ranches and towns of northern Nevada’s Carson Valley including Dresslerville — a community governed by the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California.

To Serrell Smokey, the tribe’s chairman, the sound is a reminder of racism and violence inflicted upon Native Americans — a “living piece of historical trauma” with an enduring legacy. He requested officials in the town of Minden silence the region’s last remaining siren last summer.

“It’s not just about the siren,” he said. “The siren is a reminder to a lot of people out here, especially in Dresslerville, of that past,” he said of the tribal community just 5 miles (8 kilometers) south, where stories of brutality have been passed down generations.

To members of the Washoe Tribe, the siren is inextricably linked to the ordinance, Smokey said. Elders remember seeing law enforcement jailing Native Americans and residents attacking non-white people.

“Those sirens are a reminder of that history, and the fact that they are still used indicates that our present is not so far removed from its past,” said Heather O’Connell, a Louisiana State University sociologist who has studied the correlation between historic sundown ordinances and contemporary inequality.

[In] 2006, county officials turned off the siren hoping to improve relations with the Washoe. But it was sounding again two months later following backlash from locals. As consolation, Minden passed an ordinance describing the siren’s intent as honoring first responders. [Revisionist B.S.]

The siren earlier this year drew interest from state lawmakers, along with the “Riders Against Racism,” a group of San Francisco Bay Area and Lake Tahoe mountain bikers. The organization gathered 13,000 signatures to petition to silence the siren, and held a ride through historic Washoe lands from the town to the shores of Lake Tahoe.

In June, the state banned sirens, alarms and bells historically associated with sundown ordinances as part of a new law that also directs school boards to replace racially discriminatory mascots.

Minden fought the passage of the law. Some residents in the town of about 3,200 people have referred to efforts to shut off the siren as “cancel culture.” Others have defended it as central to their heritage and likened its sound to a dinner bell — a traditional, small-town hallmark that makes the historic ranching community unique.

Before Gov. Steve Sisolak signed it into law, town officials told the Reno Gazette-Journal they had no intention of silencing it. They said Minden purchased the siren in 1921 — four years after county officials passed the sundown law — and therefore it wouldn’t be “associated” per the requirements of state law.

Despite disagreement over the siren’s meaning, Smokey and Minden Town Manager JD Frisby brokered an agreement in June to start sounding it at 5 p.m. instead of 6 p.m.

Dissociating the time of the sound from the historic ordinance, they said in a joint statement, would “acknowledge the volunteer firefighters and first responders who have been historically dispatched by the town siren” and “honor those hurt by archaic sundowner mandates of prior eras.”

It now blares at 5 p.m. — a compromise that many in the tribe have said they’re uncomfortable with and will challenge.

[A]ssemblyman Howard Watts, the Las Vegas Democrat who sponsored the legislation to shut off the siren, said the lingering pain its sound evokes demanded action. He respects the agreement the tribal chairman and town manager reached, but beforehand didn’t think the town’s effort to clarify what the siren means in their eyes was sufficient.

“Instead of changing when they rang the siren, they’ve decided to be more explicit about it being for first responders,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with honoring first responders, but you can do that at any time of the day. Having that siren continue to ring a half-hour before there was an ordinance that indicated to an entire group of people that they were no longer welcome in a community, that’s a deeply hurtful thing.”

Smokey told The Associated Press that the agreement to change the timing of the siren wouldn’t be the Washoe Tribe’s final word on the matter. He said he’s told Frisby and tribal citizens — many of whom were upset about the agreement — that his intention was to secure “immediate action.”

Smokey said he expects the council to ask for more than moving the time the siren blares. Regardless, he’s satisfied to have spread awareness about the region’s history.

Did Trump know Minden, Nevada’s “sundown town” history? You can bet his team did. This is like Ronald Reagan choosing Philadelphia, Mississipi – where civil rights activists Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were murdered in 1964 – to kick off his 1980 general election campaign, a dog whiste to state’s rights racial segregationists in keeping with the GOP’s racist Southern strategy.

NBC News reports, NAACP denounces ‘flat out racist’ remarks by GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville at Trump rally:

Leaders of major civil rights organizations on Monday condemned Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., for suggesting at a Trump rally over the weekend that descendants of Black slaves are criminals in remarks about reparations.

“Senator Tuberville’s comments are flat out racist, ignorant and utterly sickening,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement. “His words promote a centuries-old lie about Black people that throughout history have resulted in the most dangerous policies and violent attacks on our community.”

Johnson, who noted that the far-right has pushed such racist theories, added, “Next time the Senator wants to talk about crime, he should talk about Donald Trump’s hate-fueled rally on January 6, 2021, and the attacks that followed. Perhaps the real criminals are in his orbit.”

National Urban League President Marc H. Morial on Monday called Tuberville’s comments “bigoted” and “stunning.” He said every member of the Senate “must make it clear that Tuberville’s repugnant views are unacceptable and must bear no influence on public policy.”

“People of conscience can disagree on the best way to achieve economic justice after centuries of slavery, segregation, and discrimination,” Morial said in a statement. “Sen. Tuberville has disqualified himself from serious discourse by smearing in the ugliest possible terms those who pursue racial justice and those to whom justice is owed.”