Sharpton: ‘A Lot of People Have Taken Advantage of our Pain Rather than Trying to Ease Our Pain’

Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” network host Al Sharpton addressed what he referred to as “latte liberals,” who he described as liberals who are not aware of the progress being made in the black community as they sit in the Hamptons and drink lattes.

Sharpton lamented that a particular group of liberals has “taken advantage” of the “pain” of black people and people of the LGBTQ community rather than trying to ease their pain.

“Certainly, we shouldn’t sit back and congratulate ourselves, but we should not condemn ourselves for the steps and the progress that has been made,” Sharpton advised. “And I think that one of the problems that we have, which is why I call them latte liberals, is we’re having people assess what has happened that they were not the ones that it was happening to. So if you’re sitting around sipping lattes in the Hamptons talking about what’s going on in Harlem, you may not know the progress that we have made in terms of going from not being able to vote, in my mother and father’s generation, to electing a black president in my generation because you were never discriminated against. And I think that a lot of people have taken advantage of our pain rather than trying to ease our pain, whether it comes to race, whether it comes to gender, whether it comes to those in the LGBTQ community.”

“Really, I think it is also antithetical to keeping movements going to act like we’re not making progress,” he continued. “People need victories to keep fighting. People need to know that they’re not having an endless battle that will ultimately lead to defeat. What empowers people is to know that they’re not fighting for nothing and that they are achieving things, so they keep going. And I think that there are those that are in the business of pessimism, and that dampens forward progress and dampens movements. It doesn’t advance them.”

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent