It was only a matter of time before Joy Reid bought into the talking point that the incompetence from the Uvalde Police Department in last week's tragic shooting had to do with race. The segment in question came from Tuesday's episode of "The ReidOut," in which Maria Teresa Kumar of Voto Latino came on the show, as Kevin Tober highlighted the segment for NewsBusters.
Kumar mentioned to Reid that "over three hundred thousand young Latino and African American youth turn eighteen," in which she asked "where do you want to live, and do you want to live in a place that is segregated or in a place that's inclusive and recognizes you as a human and your rights?"
This prompted Reid to respond "And where it doesn’t take eleven minutes for the police to respond to an active shooter call. That was the first thing that got my senses going. Because in rich—in wealthy communities, it don't take eleven minutes. You got your sirens on. You're motoring down and it took that long to even respond at all? That got me very concerned."
It's not merely Reid and Kumar saying so, though. Kumar said she spoke to "a state senator there," who echoed those points. "That this was–If that had been a different part of town it wouldn't have taken so long and there wouldn’t have been such a long response rate. One likes to feel that is not happening, but sadly when you start looking at the statistics and you start looking at the response rate, the utter failure of that police department, you do have to start–take a step back and question what did race play into it," Kumar said about the male state senator who was otherwise unidentifiable. Reid affirmed Kumar's points with a "yeah."
Kumar and Reid were hardly the only ones to promote this take. Professor Anthea Butler from the University of Pennsylvania, tweeted a take that has since been deleted, with her tweets now protected. There's receipts though.
Race ALWAYS has to be in the mix for Leftists. Uvalde is 80% Hispanic and only 20% white. Most of their police force is Hispanic. pic.twitter.com/i2eYBIQWHl
— Sarcastic Cupcake (@SarcasticCupcak) May 31, 2022
And, as our friends at Twitchy highlighted, Jonathan Turley went after Butler in a blog post of his:
Critics have pointed out that Uvalde Police Chief Daniel Rodríguez is Latino as is Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pedro Arredondo. Many of the officers at the scene were Latino. Butler’s suggestion of racism was even more offensive given the stories of officers with children at the school and among the dead.
Last year, Butler publicly condemned what she called “colorblind racism” of people who insist that they do not judge on the basis of a person’s skin: “When people say to you, ‘I don’t see color, I see what Jesus sees in you,’ that really actually means that they just see white.” She lashed out at evangelical Christians who, she claimed, “may end up killing us all” due to their “racism, sexism, homophobia, lack of belief in science, lack of belief and common sense.”
...
In the case of Professor Butler, she knows that she can write and advocate without fear of university actions to remove her. That is precisely what all faculty should enjoy as a matter of academic freedom and free speech. However, it is a privilege often exercised selectively today. Universities are often quick to denounce conservative or libertarian faculty while ordering investigations and other measures in response to such controversies.
The List also highlighted how Mark Elliott, tweeted something similar, as they highlighted Butler's tweet.
deleted, but the List comes for all, @markmobility.
— The List (@ListComesForAll) May 26, 2022
?????? pic.twitter.com/exLUrRzvZa
According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau as of July 2021, Hispanics in Uvalde county account for 72.7 percent of the population. In Uvalde city, they account for 81.8 percent of the population.