CNN’s Don Lemon Says Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy Isn’t Black Enough To Disagree With Him On Gun Rights

This really is next level. I can hardly believe this is a real thing that happened on a nationally televised “news” program, on one of the foremost “news” channels in the country, and even the world. Don Lemon co-hosted a conversation with presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who is of the son of Indian immigrants, and the conversation predictably turned to race. Lemon challenged something Ramaswamy said about how the Civil War was fought to secure the rights and freedoms of black Americans, including 2nd amendment rights. Lemon said the two are not connected in any way, while Ramaswamy said that he “disagreed” with Lemon and believes that the right to keep and bear arms was one of the fundamental rights afforded to black Americans as a result of the Civil War, and remains a fundamental right of all Americans, including black Americans.

Then Don Lemon literally said, out loud, on national televisions, “When you have black skin and you live in this country, then you can disagree with me.”

I’m not often truly shocked, but this actually shocked me. Lemon does realize that Vivek’s skin is brown, right? In fact, it’s basically as brown as Don Lemon’s own skin. (This shouldn’t matter at all, but because Lemon made it matter, I have to discuss it.) The thing about skin color is that it doesn’t actually indicate ethnicity. Two men with the exact same color of skin could be from very different parts of the world and claim completely different races or ethnicities, and they certainly have vastly different lived experiences, but a passive observer would never know that, which is the beginning of a lengthy conversation about racial profiling and stereotyping. If America is really as racist as Lemon seems to think, then it stands to reason that Ramaswamy, an American man with brown skin, would likely have been subjected to much of the same racism that Lemon believes he was subjected to as an American man with brown skin. But to Don Lemon, brown-skinned Ramaswamy isn’t black enough to even have this conversation.

This is a prime example of race being used to simply shut down a conversation because you can’t back up your point of view. Ramaswamy makes a very good point that 2nd amendment rights are a huge part of the rights that were afforded to black Americans as a result of the changes made after the Civil War. And for Lemon to pretend like the two are not connected in any way seems a little weird and almost petulant, like he’s just stubbornly refusing to acknowledge a fairly logical and reasonable reality about the rights and freedoms that black American enjoy in America today. Lemon doesn’t like guns, so he’s just going to stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that gun rights are important by just shutting down the whole conversation by circling back to race.