Houston-based news anchor Scarlett Fakhar was so excited that president-elect Donald Trump won the White House, she wrote a post on Facebook about it. She didn’t think it would result in her getting fired.
Of course, when you blame Obama for making America more violent and racist than it’s ever been, you should probably know that’s going to ruffle a few feathers.
Here’s an excerpt of her post:
“I prayed for the best leader that will turn this country that has become more violent and racist under the Obama administration than ever… into the America I once knew…”
More violent and racist than ever? The Obama administration started on January 20, 2009. Here are a few things that happened in this country before that date:
- The Rodney King beating and the 1992 LA Riots (55 dead, over 2,000 injured)
- The Watts Riot of 1965 (34 dead, over 1,000 injured)
- The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Holy Week Uprising (43 dead, over 2,500 injured)
- Japanese internment camps
- Detroit race riot of 1943 (34 dead, over 400 injured)
- The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 (50 – 300 dead, wealthiest black community in the nation burned to the ground)
- The Red Summer of 1919 (race riots across the country left over 165 dead)
Oh yeah, and before all that there was that whole thing with the institution of slavery and the Civil War that followed.
Fakhar also implied in her post that Black Lives Matter and other movements protesting police brutality don’t have their priorities straight, as there are more instances of black people killing black people than white people killing black people:
“Look what Obama has done… how he has made the entire country hate one another. Were you happy with how many people were killing each other in our own country? I work in news… and I hate to say it… but the number of African Americans killing each other far outweighs the number of them being killed by whites.”
After getting canned, Fakhar excused her comments by returning again to her mathematical findings about crime rates:
“As a multiracial person myself, I never have been or never will be racist. I simply stated the fact that the media continues to misrepresent the factual realities that there is NO more white on black crime than there is black on black crime.”
Well sure, violence in impoverished black neighborhoods is a problem, too. But that has nothing to do with police brutality. You can think about, talk about, and try to address two problems at the same time. Politics is not a zero-sum game.
Just this morning I was complaining about how there’s no Honey Bunches in the house, and now I’m starting to think it’s a problem that there’s no sort of intelligence test required to present news on TV. I’m thinking about two problems at once! It is possible.
Featured Image via screenshot from NY Daily News video
