A Los Angeles Times columnist called conservative talk show host and California gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder “the black face of white supremacy” in the title of her op-ed published Friday.
“Larry Elder smiled the smug smile of a Black conservative who could very well be liberal California’s next governor,” Erika Smith began her op-ed. She then described a speaking event Elder attended in Orange County where he called rising crime a “phony narrative.” (RELATED: Pelosi Calls Newsom ‘A Great Governor,’ Says Recall Election Is ‘Not Good For Children Or Other Living Things’)
“Rising crime? (It’s) because of this phony narrative that the police are engaging in systemic racism and cops are pulling back,” Smith quoted Elder’s statements during the event. “… When you reduce the possibility of a bad guy getting caught, getting convicted and getting incarcerated, guess what? Crime goes up.”
“I won’t lie,” Smith wrote in response to Elder’s statement. “Few things infuriate me more than watching a Black person use willful blindness and cherry-picked facts to make overly simplistic arguments that whitewash the complex problems that come along with being Black in America.”
In today’s LA Times.
You’ve got to be real scared and desperate to play the race card against the brother from South Central. pic.twitter.com/pqZIujKxPD— Larry Elder (@larryelder) August 20, 2021
Elder responded on Twitter by saying Smith had to be “scared and desperate to play the race card against the brother from South Central.”
“Elder opposes every single public policy idea that’s supported by Black people to help Black people,” Smith wrote, and repeatedly called Elder “smug” throughout the op-ed.
Smith also claimed Elder does not believe systemic racism or racial profiling exists, despite the fact that Elder told The Times’ editorial board police pulled him over “‘between 75 and 100 times’ the first year he had his driver’s license.”
Smith then criticized Elder for sharing statistics that black people are more likely to kill each other rather than root out racial bias in policing by “requiring more transparency and accountability from officers.”
“Do we still have the phenomenon where a young Black man is eight times more likely to be killed by another young Black man than a young white man?” Elder told the Republicans in Orange County at the speaking event. “If the answer to those series of questions is yes, I submit to you that systemic racism is not the problem.”
Given the wide gap of vaccination rates in California between whites and blacks/hispanics, Gavin Newsom forcing any private event organizer to implement vaccine passports is a modern day form of state sponsored racial segregation. Disparate impact, as the woke like to say.
— Larry Elder (@larryelder) August 20, 2021
Smith proceeded to criticize Elder for tweeting “his grievances over mask and vaccine mandates, promising that as governor, he will ‘repeal those before I have my first cup of coffee — and I don’t drink coffee,'” despite “abysmal” death rates due to COVID-19 for black people.