Unearthed video shows RNC speaker Abby Johnson making cruelly racist remarks about her own adopted son
This evening, the Republican National Convention will feature a speech from anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood worker who quit and rocketed to right-wing fame after she shared an extremely questionable account of watching an abortion 13 weeks into pregnancy. You will be unsurprised to learn that the Planned Parenthood clinic she worked at in Bryan, Texas, has no record of such a procedure.
But this being the RNC 2020, which has so far been an absolutely psychotic barrage of outrageous lies and repulsive bootlicking of a racist narcissist packaged in barely concealed white supremacist dog whistles, it is only fitting that not only is this woman likely a shameless liar but also a reprehensible racist.
VICE News has unearthed a now-private video of Johnson speaking in appalling terms of how her adopted biracial son is going to grow into an “intimidating looking brown man” and is more likely to commit a violent crime because of it.
So this is @AbbyJohnson. Abby adopted a bi-racial child. Abby is racist. Abby will be speaking to the GOP convention tonight. Here is racist Abby talking about how her bi-racial child is more likely to be a criminal. H/T @VICENews pic.twitter.com/v7H7hIKgce
— Hercules Mulligan's back b/c that energy is needed (@johnvmoore) August 25, 2020
“Right now, Jude is an adorable, perpetually tan-looking little brown boy. But one day, he’s going to grow up and he’s going to be a tall, probably sort of large, intimidating-looking-maybe brown man. And my other boys are probably gonna look like nerdy white guys…Statistically, I look at our prison population and see that there is a disproportionately high number of African-American males in our prison population for crimes, particularly for violent crimes. So statistically, when a police officer sees a brown man like my Jude walking down the road — as opposed to my white nerdy kids, my white nerdy men walking down the road — because of the statistics that he knows in his head, that these police officers know in their head, they’re going to know that statistically, my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons.”
So the fact that in his head, he would be more careful around my brown son than my white son, that doesn’t actually make me angry. That makes that police officer smart, because of statistics.”
She went on to repeat racist stereotypes about Black fatherhood and blamed “bad dads” for criminality:
“I believe the primary reason that we see a lot of the illness in our society today and one of the reasons that we’re seeing a lot of what’s happening today in our society is because of fatherlessness, because fathers have not stood up and they have not taken their place in the home and particularly in Black homes…“70% of these dads are walking out on their babies.”
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The “crime statistics” thing is a beloved trope among white supremacists and racists, who use it to dehumanize Black Americans with stereotypes and justify the appalling violence which the police inflict on them. Never do they mention that the statistics are tilted because institutionalized racism in America’s police forces lead to an overwhelming racial disparity in arrests.
To see this woman speak this way about her own son is absolutely nauseating, and it hammers home how the anti-abortion movement goes hand in hand with white supremacy.
Outrage and disgust immediately erupted on social media in the wake of the revelations:
Be suspicious of any conservative white family you know who is adopting a PoC child because this is how they view and raise them. @AbbyJohnson is the worst kind of person, and the irony of her pro-life political reign is too much. They don’t value non-white life — even their own. https://t.co/D9ctLYAQCB
— Jennifer C. Martin (@notreallyjcm) August 25, 2020
https://t.co/doIsqXcR2r pic.twitter.com/Uv50gWQFUl
— Liz Charboneau (@lizchar) August 25, 2020
Original reporting by Carter Sherman at VICE.
