CNN’s Don Lemon: ‘Stop Pretending Racism Doesn’t Exist, That Bias Doesn’t Exist’

[WARNING: OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE]

Tuesday on CNN’s “Situation Room,” while commenting on President Barack Obama’s speech at the memorial service for the fallen officers in Dallas, TX, network anchor Don Lemon said it’s time as a nation we “stop pretending that racism doesn’t exist, that bias doesn’t exist in this culture.”

Lemon said,”So many people as he said, easily fall back into the way things were, into our comfortable rhetoric. I think that won’t make a difference. Not that I really care what people say on social media. If you go on social media and you look at the comments immediately after the president, the people who dislike this president, the words will just bounce off and hate him more, even though what he said today makes complete sense. His message was no different from George W. Bush’s message, no different than Police Chief Brown’s message, they were all on the same message. So if this is bouncing off of you and not resonating with you, then you need to check yourself and look from within. Imagine George Bush saying the words that Barack Obama said and vis versa. And if the police chief’s words bounced off of you as someone who may be on the more liberal side of things, you need to check yourself as well. It is time to stop pretending that racism doesn’t, that bias exist in this culture.”

He continued, “I’m going to share a very personal story as I was out this weekend with friends. We were discussing the Dallas shooting at a bar/restaurant. It was two African-Americans, me and someone else. There were others with us in the immediate vicinity. And as we were talking, my friend is talking about it and my friend is a black guy, and the guy looked at him and said, ‘How does that make you feel as a nigger?’ And everybody just got quiet and looked at him like, ‘Is this 2016? Is this really happening? I swear on a stack of Bibles, on my life, that this happened just this weekend in a place that you would not think it could happen—in a place where there are intelligent people. There are very liberal people in the sense of the types of people they engage with. So we have to stop pretending that these things don’t happen, that people don’t have implicit bias that you don’t hear words and racism and prejudice in your own family, and with people you love and it’s not within you. It’s in all of us. The president said none of us is innocent, no institution is immune. So we should come from that place.”

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