He's from a slave state. They're all used to losing big.

Tom Cotton of Arkansas probably thought he was being clever when he
accidentally said the quiet part aloud to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
for an article that ran Sunday � he said that slavery was a necessary
evil to ensure the creation of the United States of America.
Issac Bailey
Issac Bailey

Here is what he told the paper: �We have to study the history of slavery
and its role and impact on the development of our country because
otherwise we can�t understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said,
it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union
was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its
ultimate extinction.�

It�s a belief likely held by millions of White Americans and also by a
number of white historians. It�s just that Cotton said it more plainly
and directly than most. It�s that ability � White Americans� penchant for
compartmentalizing and rationalizing when it comes to issues of race �
that has made it possible for a president as inept and racist as Donald
Trump to have any chance of being re-elected.

Even amid the racial reckoning underway in America, there�s evidence that
that type of rationalizing remains. Cotton is merely Exhibit A. For
example, while polls show a growing percentage of White people are
willing to acknowledge that Black people are treated differently by the
criminal justice system, a majority tell pollsters they still believe
Confederate monuments should essentially be left alone � like Cotton
does.

Cotton�s plainspoken demonstration of racist rationalizing to the
Arkansas paper began after he tried to use his position as a US Senator
to cancel and smear the groundbreaking 1619 Project, a New York Times
initiative that forced readers to see this nation�s founding anew,
through the eyes of the enslaved and those who came after them � instead
of through the eyes of the enslavers, as most traditional histories of
America have done. Cotton wants to deny federal funding to schools who
use the 1619 Project as a teaching tool. Several schools have adopted it;
others plan to. I�ve used it in my journalism classes at Davidson College
and will again this fall.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 19: People participate in a march in Brooklyn
for both Black Lives Matter and to commemorate the 155th anniversary of
Juneteenth on June 19, 2020 in New York City. Juneteenth commemorates
June 19, 1865, when a Union general read orders in Galveston, Texas
stating all enslaved people in Texas were free according to federal law.
As the nation comes to terms from a number of recent killings of black
Americans by police, Juneteenth is being celebrated and recognized
throughout the country in marches, memorials and services. (Photo by
Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
video

Related video Nikole Hannah-Jones on the case for reparations

Cotton shouldn�t be dictating what goes on inside classrooms, and those
serious about free speech should vigorously oppose his proposed law,
which would financially penalize school districts using the 1619 Project
curriculum by depriving them of federal professional development funds
and lowering their overall federal funding to reflect any �cost
associated with teaching the 1619 Project, including in planning time and
teaching time.�

But that he attacked the 1619 Project in particular is telling. The
project is an unapologetic series of essays and other works that has
upended America�s foundational story like little else. Its authors, led
by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones,
didn�t treat the founders as near god-like wise men. Instead, they told
the truth about what it means for a nation to have been built on a
contradiction: that all men are created equal but that Black people
needed to be in chains and shackles. They explained why Black people
decided to love a country that hated it and why it took Black people to
make real the words the founders wrote but didn�t live up to.

The project, released in 2019, explored historical connections between
capitalism and slavery and showed why racism � slavery�s most obvious
legacy in this country � is one of the primary reasons we don�t have a
universal health care system like most of the developed world. The
project raised the kinds of questions � and presciently provided
historical references and citations � students need to grapple with
during a time such as this.

Cotton�s words to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reveal his motivation for
attacking the project: because he appears to be more comfortable with US
and Confederate myths about our country�s founding. It seems to offend
him that others don�t care for those myths as much as he does. After
social media erupted to call out his appalling remarks, he realized his
error and quickly tried to backtrack Monday. He absurdly argued that he
never said what he clearly said. And his buddies in conservative media
have been quick to help him try to spin his way out of his clear
admission.

They want the genie put back in the bottle because if it isn�t, it will
make their jobs more difficult. It won�t be as easy to sidestep the
nation�s current efforts to confront racism.

Recall, again, what Cotton told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

�As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the
union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to
put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.�

On Monday, when his words were read back to him by Brian Kilmeade on Fox
News, he chuckled and said �that is fake news, Brian. That�s not what I
said.�

I�m not sure if we should call that a lie or just delusional.

He went on: �What I said is that many founders believed that only with
the Union and the Constitution could we put slavery on the path to its
ultimate extinction. That�s exactly what Lincoln said. Of course, slavery
is an evil institution in all its forms at all times in America�s past or
around the world today. But the fundamental moral principle of America is
right there in the Declaration � all men are created equal. And the
history of America is the long and sometimes difficult struggle to live
up to that principle.�

Cotton, like so many others, clearly isn�t comfortable speaking
truthfully about this country�s racial history. That�s why they rely upon
absurd qualifiers such as �necessary� for an institution as evil as race-
based chattel slavery. In their telling, our great, wise founders were
able to defeat what was then the world�s lone superpower, ensure that
this would be a democracy we could be proud of two and a half centuries
later � but they couldn�t find a way to rid themselves of slavery? They
supposedly put slavery on a path to extinction, as Cotton also claimed in
the Democrat-Gazette article, but the institution grew by the millions in
the decades before more than 600,000 Americans were killed in the Civil
War.

Such logic can�t withstand serious scrutiny. That�s why Cotton would
rather hold fast to myths. They are easy. Grappling with this country�s
racial history is hard.