On CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip on May 11, 2026, Bakari Sellers delivered one of the most ignorant racial rants of the year.
“To be completely honest, I think Ashley and I have to wrestle with the fact that we are going to be the first generation to actually leave this country worse than the one that we inherited. And I think for black millennials, the progress that our parents and grandparents gave us, they were watching being ripped away from us.”
This is complete nonsense. Black business ownership, entrepreneurship rates, median incomes over the long term, and the number of Black elected officials and business leaders are at or near historic highs. Claiming your generation is leaving America “worse” is pure defeatist fiction that ignores massive progress.
“If somebody fell asleep in 1896 and woke up today in 2026, they would simply say the only difference is now negroes have a TV show, and we wear nice suits. They swapped out Klan hoods for Brooks Brothers suits…”
This is disgusting garbage. In 1896: legal segregation, poll taxes, literacy tests, widespread lynchings, and zero Black voting rights. Today: full legal equality, integrated schools and society, Black senators, governors, a former Black president, Supreme Court justices, CEOs, billionaires, and record-high Black political participation. Equating normal redistricting with Jim Crow is an insult to real victims of history.
“Plessy v Ferguson was 7:1, and it gave birth to 50 years of Jim Crow. What we have with this court right now, what we are seeing, is watching people who have fought and died and bled so that we would have access to the ballot box, so that we would have access to our voices being heard in Congress, being ripped away. I think there is a casual laughter from people we believed to be or friends on the right who are showing us true colors today. Because the most sacred or one of the most sacred acts you have in the USA is the ability to cast a ballot…that represent your interest. Now Black folks throughout the south are being silenced. Ands I don’t find that to be laughing matter.”
Cheapening the blood of civil rights martyrs for political points. Plessy legalized forced segregation. Redrawing maps after Supreme Court rulings on racial gerrymandering is not ripping away the ballot box. Black Southerners still register, vote, run for office, and win seats. Ending race-based quota districts is not “silencing” anyone — it’s ending unconstitutional racial engineering.
“Not only is the chaos, but you’re literally throwing out votes… In South Carolina, people have already voted from overseas and you chuckle about it.”
Pure hysteria. Adjusting primary dates — something states do regularly — is not “throwing out votes.” Overseas and military voters get new ballots with the updated schedule. This is routine election housekeeping, not suppression. The real chaos is Democrats melting down every time they lose a structural advantage.
The irony is hilarious: Sellers lectures about the Klan while loyally supporting the Democratic Party — the same party that defended slavery, created the Klan, passed Jim Crow laws, and fought against every major civil rights bill. Yet he has the nerve to cry “Brooks Brothers suits” as the new hoods. Fair maps based on population and geography aren’t racism — they’re common sense. Treating every Republican win as a return to 1896 is exactly why this race-baiting rhetoric keeps losing.
Video clip via Breitbart News.
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