MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry, who encouraged black-on-white violence during a speech at Cornell University, is a peddler of racial rhetoric who perverts the message of Martin Luther King, says Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition.
"This is an intellectual, this is a professor formerly from Princeton … who engages in racial rhetoric for delight, to raise the rack hackles and she loves this racial rhetoric," Meyers said Thursday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
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"I'm surprised that people tolerate this nonsense by not rejecting it because saying you're doing the Martin Luther King Jr. lecture — he was a man of peace. They invert and pervert the message of Martin Luther King Jr."
Harris-Perry was at a Cornell event named for Martin Luther King and discussing the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, when she said she hoped Martin "whooped the [expletive] out of George Zimmerman."
"This is a culture of celebrity. [Harris-Perry] gets invited to do these things and speeches because she's on TV and she has a show and people love that racial rhetoric that they hear on MSNBC every day," Meyers said.
"They hear that and they say come bring her, she's great and we want to hear from Melissa."
Meyers also criticized Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan for calling former Rudy Giuliani a "privileged cracker" and "privileged devil," after the former New York City mayor said President Barack Obama didn't love America.
"Farrakhan is still seeking to be the voice of black America," Meyers said.
"He has always been the apostle of black racism, he has always been the apostle of racial lunacy, but you don't have even the so-called resurrected and different Al Sharpton condemning Farrakhan.
"All the black leaders they grab the, hug them, they give credence to and they love Farrakhan because they think Farrakhan is blacker than black."
Meyers also hammered National Public Radio for diversifying by putting what he says are
African Americans on the air "who speak black."
"They want a black voice at NPR because they have too many white voices? What the heck is a white voice?" Meyers said.
"Invariably, the black voice is one that speaks with bad grammar. Invariably, the black voice is the one that tries to be authentically black by speaking ghetto trash, what they call black English.
"I'm disgusted by this racism, but they don't see it as that. They see it as being responsible to the black community."
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