Iowa Congressman Steve King has had enough with detractors who condemn the Republican Party for being full of “old white people,” and led a panel discussion into a shouting match by questioning whether any other “subgroup” of people have contributed more to civilization.
Sitting in on an MSNBC panel with host Chris Hayes at the GOP convention in Cleveland Monday evening, King reacted to a fellow panelist’s comment that he was “disappointed” that “old white people” still run the GOP platform.
“If you’re really optimistic, you can say ‘this is the last time that old white people will command the Republican Party’s attention, its platform, its public face,'” said Esquire’s Charlie Pierce in response to Hayes’ point that many of the GOP’s top minority officials are absent from this week’s convention.
“Of course I thought that was going to happen after 2012. Thanks to the good work of Congressman King I was severely disappointed,” he continued.
“That hall is wired by loud, unhappy, dissatisfied white people,” Pierce added. “Any sign of rebellion is going to get shouted down either kindly or roughly.”
That’s when King jumped in.
“This ‘old white people’ business does get a little tired Charlie,” King said. “I mean I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you’re talking about.”
“Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?” he added.
“Than white people?” Chris Hayes asked.
“Than western civilization itself, that’s rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world. That’s all of Western civilization,” King replied.
The panel then dove into an uproar as Pierce and April Ryan, who is black, all began talking at once.
“We’re not going to argue the history of Western civilization,” Hayes interjected. “Let me note for the record that if you’re looking at the ledger of Western civilization, for every flourishing democracy, you have Hitler and Stalin as well.”
Ryan, who offered Asia and Africa as non-Western civilization examples, said in an off-the-cuff remark, “the Republican Party loses the minority vote right now.”
King is no stranger to raising eyebrows being involved in incidents that have been viewed as insensitive to non-whites, including a recent news report that showed a Confederate flag displayed on his office desk. In June he tried and failed to stymie legislation that would put Harriet Tubman on the $20. He also received backlash for suggesting in 2013 that Latin American immigrants have “calves the size of cantaloupes.”
