US Attorney General William Barr, a top Trump appointee and the highest ranking US law enforcement official, has drawn fire for comparing Covid-19 lockdown orders to the historical US enslavement of black people.
“You know, putting a national lockdown, stay at home orders, is like house arrest. Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history,” he told a college in Michigan on Wednesday.
In a CNN interview, Democratic Congressman James Clyburn – the highest-ranked African-American in the House of Representatives – slammed the remark as “the most ridiculous, tone-deaf, God-awful thing I’ve ever heard”.
“It is incredible that the chief law enforcement officer in this country would equate human bondage to expert advice to save lives. Slavery was not about saving lives, it was about devaluing lives.” He pointed out that the federal government never instituted a lockdown, and they were instead ordered by the states.
Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, who is also black, took issue with Barr’s description of slavery as a form of “restraint,†telling CNN it was actually “one of the worst crimes against humanity ever committedâ€.
Source:Â bbc.com