“The View” panelists discussed racism on Martin Luther King Day and expressed distress that the United States is still fighting many of the same issues that activists during the civil rights movement confronted.
Paula Faris lamented that the #BlackLivesMatter movement could be missing an MLK-type figure, though Whoopi Goldberg retorted that the real question is why the movement is not treated the same way as the civil rights movement was.
“Why are we still fighting the same things?” Goldberg asked. “Why is it that when lots of kids say, ‘This is something that’s bothersome to me,’ and they’re out protesting, why is it not recognized the same way?”
“We have the paperwork to say we’re equal, segregation is gone, you’re okay, you’re safe,” said Raven-Symone. “We have that paperwork, but that doesn’t change the minds of the people. That doesn’t change what is being done on an everyday, face to face type of lifestyle.”
Joy Behar took particular offense to the rhetoric used by some current presidential candidates.
“The kind of racist rhetoric we’re hearing right now in this political season is really contributing to the problem. It makes all the racists come out of the woodwork and think that they now have the right to speak in these racist terms,” she said. “It gives permission to these supremacists and KKK. It’s a disgrace and should always be countered-pointed with a different position.”
“It breaks my heart that we’re here, that we’ve regressed to this point,” Faris said. “Let’s be a part of the change. How can we make this better?”
Goldberg believes she has the answer.
“One of the best things you and everybody can do is learn your history,” she said. “Understand why an older black man might be mad. Because they went to World War II, fought a war in another country, came back to their own country and couldn’t vote. Understand the history, understand what’s happened. Once you know what happened, you are not so doomed to repeat it.”