Vivek Ramaswamy fires back at reporter asking if he condemns white supremacy: ‘Stupid question’
#vivekramaswamy #politics #media
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy went off on a reporter Wednesday who asked him if he condemns “white supremacy and white nationalism.”
The 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur schooled the reporter about his position that white supremacy is not to blame. Instead, however, “affirmative action” causes much strife and racial conflict in the country, he explained.
“Of course I condemn any form of vicious racial discrimination in this country. But I think that the presumption of your question is fundamentally based on a falsehood that really is the main form of racial discrimination we see in this country today,” he told the Washington Post reporter during a campaign event in Scott County, Iowa.
“Institutionalized racism is institutionalized racial discrimination that we see that doesn’t come from somehow discriminating against people on the basis of some tentative white supremacy. It’s based on affirmative action. It’s based on actually discriminating against people on the color of their skin in a way that’s actually institutionalized today,” Ramaswamy added.
Ramaswamy acknowledged that in the past, “vicious forms of anti-black or anti-brown discrimination” did exist in the US, but he chided the reporters for “looking in the rearview mirror … to pose a question today that is so far removed from what the reality is.”