Eddie Glaude Jr.: Bill Barr Is Desperate to Paint White Anti-Maskers as Victims

Princeton Professor Eddie Glaude Jr. criticized Attorney General William Barr on Friday but his comments contrasting Coronavirus lockdowns to slavery. Glaude spoke to MSNBC’s Morning Joe about the remarks which caused widespread condemnation.

“I want to go back to you Eddie Glaude because you and I were texting about that comment about slavery and Bill Barr and his casual invocation of slavery as a comparison to lockdowns, to stay-at-home orders to protect people in a pandemic,” host Willie Geist said.

“The little parenthetic phrase, slavery: a different kind of restraint. You talk about Hemingway-like under statement. Slavery, a different kind of restraint,” Glaude said.

“It seems to me that William Barr is searching so desperately to find a way to describe white Americans who refuse to wear masks as victims that he’s reaching for comparisons that not only don’t make any sense but reveal a kind of moral tone deafness, that reveals his character in interesting sorts of ways ways.”

“That’s the first thing. And two, really quickly, is that the idea of liberty and freedom here has become a synonym for selfishness and I think we need to begin to interrogate what that means because people are using liberty as an excuse to just simply be selfish and mean spirited and endanger people that they don’t care about other than themselves. So I think I want to keep those things in mind at the same time.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.